The East – Discover Where You Live: The Masters’ Houses Dessau

They are the most famous artists’ colony of the 20th century. The epitome of modern living of their time. A model for residential ensembles in Israel, the USA and South America: the Masters’ Houses in Dessau. The Dessau Masters’ Houses. Bold and revolutionary buildings. They were occupied in the summer 90 years ago. By the director of the New Bauhaus, Walter Gropius, and the painters Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Schlemmer, Georg Muche and Moholy-Nagy. Teachers and so-called masters at the legendary art school that opened in Dessau on 4 December 1926. By the end of the 1920s the Bauhaus people were a firm social fixture in Dessau and were held in high esteem. Guests came from Germany and abroad. The artistic elite of the time passed through Dessau one after another: Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, Gret Palucca, Kazimir Malevich, Paul Hindemith, Marcel Duchamp, Solomon Guggenheim. The reputation of the small settlement was and remains legendary to this day. A hotspot of the avant-garde, later disfigured by the Nazis and partly destroyed by bombs on 7 March 1945. In GDR times the cubic villas were built over and fell into disrepair. After reunification the ensemble was restored and rebuilt, and finally tells a fascinating story once again. We meet Bauhaus heirs such as Konrad Feininger and Dirk Scheper as well as other former residents such as Ralph Walter Hagemann and look at the influence the Masters’ Houses exerted.

30 minutes, MDR