Bauhaus and its Sites in Weimar, Dessau and Bernau

Bauhaus and its Sites in Weimar, Dessau and Bernau is a serial property of buildings and housing estates linked to the Bauhaus school of design, founded in 1919 in Germany. The ensemble includes purpose-built workshops, housing and exhibition buildings that defined modern architecture and design.

Walter Gropius established the Bauhaus in 1919 to unify art, craft and technology; the school moved to Dessau in 1925 where new purpose-built facilities were erected, and it closed under political pressure in 1933. The sites document the school’s evolution from experimental pedagogy to influential modernist practice.

The sites are located in central Germany: Weimar in Thuringia, Dessau in Saxony-Anhalt and Bernau near Berlin, each representing different phases of the Bauhaus movement.

• Founding and dates: The Bauhaus school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919 and later relocated to Dessau in 1925 before political pressure led to its closure in 1933.

What to See #

• Weimar sites: The Weimar group includes the Haus am Horn and other early Bauhaus buildings dating from the movement's founding period in 1919, which demonstrate experimental design and pedagogy under the school's first phase.
• Dessau sites: The Dessau group centres on the Bauhaus Building and the adjacent Masters' Houses, designed by Walter Gropius in the mid-1920s and exemplifying functionalist modernist architecture.
• Bernau sites: Bernau comprises housing built for workers and students that reflects early Bauhaus approaches to social housing and prefabrication in the late 1920s and early 1930s.