The year 2025 will be the year of Bauhaus in German Dessau, celebrating its centenary

Dessau – The year 2025 in the eastern German city of Dessau will be marked by the Bauhaus. It will be exactly one hundred years since the famous art school moved to the city from Weimar. A series of exhibitions, lectures, film screenings, and conferences are being prepared, focusing on history, as well as the challenges faced by contemporary architecture and construction. The celebrations will last until next year, when it will be one hundred years since the opening of the Bauhaus headquarters, which has made Dessau a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1996.

The Bauhaus School of Fine Arts was founded in 1919 in Weimar by architect Walter Gropius. However, in 1925 it had to move to Dessau, where it experienced its period of greatest flourishing. For the last two years of its existence, it was based in Berlin until it was closed by the Nazis in 1933. Despite its relatively short period of operation, the Bauhaus left an indelible mark on modern architecture, design, and applied arts. The creators emphasized simplicity, geometry, and function over Art Nouveau embellishments.

The first events commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of the Bauhaus's move from Weimar to Dessau are planned for the end of January, but the main part of the celebrations will begin in September and the packed program will continue until December 2026, when the city will commemorate one hundred years since the opening of the complex of the art school buildings. The program for the jubilee year in Dessau is somewhat more modest than the grand celebrations of the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus in 2019, which included, for example, the opening of museums in Weimar and Dessau.

The anniversary events, which will revolve around the motto "To Substance" (An die Substanz), will not be limited to just recalling history. According to the director of the Bauhaus Foundation, Barbara Steiner, conferences and lectures will address not only the issue of materials and their use one hundred years ago but also today. In light of current developments, the program will focus on architecture and construction in times of natural resource scarcity and climate change. "The jubilee year will equally address the fundamentals and the search for socially and environmentally responsible creation today," Steiner stated.

In addition to architecture, the Bauhaus also taught metalwork, textiles, photography, typography, and scenography. The aim was for graduates to master crafts and various disciplines, thus becoming well-rounded artists. Prominent figures associated with the Bauhaus include architects Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, artists Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian, Lyonel Feininger, Josef Albers, László Moholy-Nagy, and Oskar Schlemmer. From the Czech Republic, art theorist and artist Karel Teige lectured in Dessau.