Modernity and the Republic: The first German Democracy and the Bauhaus
Michael Dreyer (Political Science and Weimar Republic Research Center, FSU Jena)

The Bauhaus was not just an architectural, aesthetic, or even cultural “event”. It was born, it lived, and it was destroyed in a politically volatile environment – not unlike the Weimar Republic, which was conceived in the same provincial town in Thuringia. The talk will address the connections between the first German democracy and the democratic culture it created and nurtured. It will be argued that the Bauhaus could only be created – and exist – within the political framework of the Weimar liberal democracy and the cultural environment the new Republic deliberately furthered. Against expectations the Weimar Republic saw itself as a “Kulturstaat” that encouraged the arts in an unprecedented way. The downside of this connection between modernity, democracy and culture was the fact that the opponents of the Weimar Republic on both extremist sides attacked its cultural emanations as well. And the Bauhaus was part of these political-cultural wars that characterized the Weimar Republic from its birth until its destruction.