A new Bauhaus museum was ceremoniously opened in Weimar

Weimar/Berlin - The jewels of the Bauhaus art school, including several pieces of furniture from the Tugendhat villa in Brno, can be viewed starting Saturday by visitors to the new museum in Weimar, Germany, the city where this school was founded 100 years ago. The institution, simply named Bauhaus Museum, was officially opened today.

"The foundation of our museum consists of 168 objects, which were selected by the founder of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius," explains art historian Anke Blümm. "It's a tremendous treasure because it is the first, most authentic, and oldest collection of Bauhaus in the world," she emphasizes the significance of items such as tea sets, ceramics, furniture, and carpets displayed on the top, fifth floor of the new museum.

However, it almost happened that today's visitors would never have the chance to see them at all. Gropius, who established the art school in Weimar in early April 1919, donated them to the city in 1925, when the Bauhaus had to move to the town of Dessau in Saxony-Anhalt due to heavy political pressure. "The objects were then handed over wrapped in boxes. The director of the local museum put them away somewhere in the inner parts of the castle museum, where they were never unpacked, so they never went through inventory," recounts Blümm, who notes that, thanks to this, the Nazis were completely unaware of the collection, as they were opposed to Bauhaus art and its ideas. "They would have likely confiscated them otherwise," she believes.

Gropius's collection eventually resurfaced in 1955, thirty years after the famous architect donated it to the Thuringian city. Additional items gradually joined the original objects, so today the collection comprises around 13,000 items. More than 1,000 are displayed in the new museum.

Among them are iconic Bauhaus pieces such as a children's cradle by Peter Keller, chairs by Marcel Breuer, and a teapot by Marianne Brandt. According to Blümm, two tables and two cabinets designed by the last director of the art school, Mies van der Rohe, for the Tugendhat villa are also among the most significant exhibits. These have been long-term loans to the Weimar museum from a private collector, with the exhibition focusing on the question of how we want to live together.

The opportunity to showcase the collection in its greatest variety was one of the main reasons for creating the new Bauhaus museum in the city associated with the Weimar Republic and the giants of German cultural history, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. "In the old museum, it was not possible to display the collection in such diversity as here. The climatic conditions were also worse," explains Blümm.

Thanks to the generous space of 2,000 m², the new museum, which focuses among other things on the experimental nature of the art school, even has a workshop where visitors can become creative artists themselves. They will not only have access to traditional tools but also the most modern ones, such as 3D printers.

The concept of the building itself is also very modern, designed by Berlin architect Heike Hanada. The enormous light gray block is interrupted on one side by a large glazed entrance and on two other sides by concentrated windows in one spot of the facade. On the western side of the building, whose construction cost 27 million euros (693 million crowns) and took about three and a half years, the windows are smaller and scattered. The second element dividing the concrete structure consists of 24 horizontal lines running around the entire building. These lines contain LED lighting, which at night, according to Hanada, "dissolves the heaviness of the building".

How successfully this was achieved can be assessed by visitors for the first time this weekend, when admission will be free. On other days, the entrance fee will be 11 euros (282 crowns). Those who do not wish to pay this amount can also explore the museum and a large part of its exhibition through a special mobile application.

> www.bauhausmuseumweimar.de