he Bauhaus centenary often gives the impression that this laboratory of modernism was a trailblazer for pretty much everything. Its combination of industry, art and craft, its teaching methods, publications, the notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk... And last but not least, a holistic understanding of aesthetics, which many architects still value today as their personal guiding principle. Despite its short lifespan of less than 15 years, the Bauhaus remains a source of inspiration for countless current trends today. "The Bauhaus #itsalldesign" was the title of an exhibition on this at Vitra Design Museum in 2015. "From the city to the pen, everything that surrounds us is Bauhaus," writes Patrik Schumacher of Zaha Hadid Architects in "My Bauhaus. My Bauhaus" (Edition Detail, 2018). Yet despite all the praise, a counter-question might be justified: What is not Bauhaus these days? In other words: What should we do better than the Bauhaus? Where should we take distance from it?
Gender role reform
On 19 January 1919, women were permitted for the first time to vote in the election of the German National Assembly. A few months later, the Bauhaus founding director, Walter Gropius, noted in a speech at its opening in Weimar, "No difference between the beautiful and the strong sex. Absolute equality, but also absolutely equal duties." The new human being who was to be formed at the Bauhaus could also be female. This was hardly a matter of course at the time. For the 1919 summer semester, 79 men and 84 women were admitted to the art school. At first glance, this might be considered a success, and apparently linked to the institution's revolutionary idea of reform. Black-and-white photos of the time depict female Bauhaus students as self-confident design pioneers with cropped hair and sometimes even wearing trousers.
But the image of this new type of woman that is often associated with the Bauhaus does not tell the whole story. Shortly after the school's founding, the entirely male council of masters felt overwhelmed by so many women. In September 1920, Gropius called for a "sharp segregation" from the "over-represented female sex". The otherwise free workshop choice was extremely restricted for female students, who from then on were sent to the weaving workshop to study. The male domains remained closed off to the "beautiful sex". Many male teachers made it blatantly clear that women were undesirable - be it in pottery, graphic printing, at the metal workshop or in mural painting. Oskar Schlemmer, who joined the Bauhaus in 1921, has been quoted as saying, "Where there is wool, there is also a woman who weaves, even if only to pass the time."
Women's careers at the Bauhaus
When it came to the role of women, this elite modernist school was not revolutionary and future-oriented, but old-fashioned and backward-looking. "The strategy of stealthy obstruction was effective - the masters did not dare to proceed openly," notes Ursula Muscheler in her recent German-language book, "Mutter, Muse und Frau Bauhaus" (English: "Mother, Muse and Mrs. As an institution, the Bauhaus did not support women as such, but rather tried to commit them to a role model that corresponded to the prevailing conservative image of women and housewives held by themale masters. So it is all the more astonishing that some of its female students nevertheless made a career for themselves, thanks to the support of individual masters. Among them are Gunta Stölz and Anni Albers or Lilly Reich headed the workshop for interior design unter Mies van der Rohe. Marianne Brandt studied with Lázló Moholy-Nagy and, after his departure, took over the management of the metal workshop.
Pioneers of architecture
The dawn of modernism in Europe is rightly understood as the dawn of women who first conquered the field of architecture - from Charlotte Perriand to Margarethe Schütte-Lihotzky and Eileen Grey. The female pioneers at the Bauhaus, in contrast, were more tolerated than welcomed. 100 years after its founding, it is time to assess what has occurred in the wake of the Bauhaus and where we stand today.
When the American architect Robert Venturi received the Pritzker Prize in 1991, his long-time partner in life and work Denise Scott Brown, with whom he co-founded Venturi Scott Brown Associates, was left out. "Room at the Top. Sexism and the Star System" is the title of a lecture by Scott Brown (1973, published in 1989), a sobering account of the institutional discrimination against women that she experienced during her career. To this day, women in architecture are often outsiders, and it is not self-evident that they will be taken as seriously as their male colleagues. Despite a petition, Denise Scott Brown was not retroactively awarded the Pritzker Prize alongside her husband. But the 86-year-old architect has never given up the fight for equality. In a recent interview, she offered a word of advice to young female architects and university graduates: "Another thing is accepting that architecture trains you for many, many things and not necessarily in architecture. But if you can, try and do it on your own terms."
Now what?
These days, the architecture departments of most universities have more female than male students. But there is no spirit of optimism to be felt. It remains difficult for women to establish themselves in the profession after graduation. Of course, there are exceptions, but why do women remain underrepresented in the field? Such questions should also be critically addressed by publishers, even Detail. Taking a closer look and researching beyond the minimum is only part of our editorial strategy in reaction to this. Selecting projects with a critical eye and scrutinizing the star system should be the norm, not the exception. Much has changed for the better, thanks to the Bauhaus. But women's equality in architecture still has far to go. So let's keep pushing forward!
