How Bauhaus and immigrant architects inspired ‘The Brutalist’

László Toth, a Hungarian Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor, emigrates to the United States after World War II in search of a new life. After a rough start, a wealthy businessman recognises his talent and offers him a job that will change his life.

This is a very brief summary of Brady Corbet’s film The Brutalist, which stars Adrien Brody as Toth. While the protagonist of this almost four-hour film is fictional, his story is inspired by many real figures.

During the rise of Nazism in Germany, and especially after the de facto demise of the Weimar Republic in 1933, many intellectuals, scientists and other educated people chose to emigrate in search of a more favourable climate in which to work. For many, it was also a matter of life and death.

The legacy of Bauhaus

Many of these émigrés were architects associated with the Bauhaus, the famous school of design and architecture established in 1919 in Weimar. The institution, which later moved to Dessau and then to Berlin, left a legacy that endures to this day.

Bauhaus directors were among those who left Germany in this period. This included architect and Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, who headed the school in Weimar and then Dessau, and designed the new building there. His Dessau successor Hannes Meyer also left, as did Mies van der Rohe, who headed the school in Dessau and Berlin, where the school was closed by the Nazi government.

The Bauhaus building in Dessau, designed by Walter Gropius. [Photo: Wikimedia Commons]

The Bauhaus was an indisputable cornerstone of interwar Germany’s cultural, political and social development, and while its architecture course was not established until about halfway through its existence, the school is worth studying from an architectural perspective.

While they each had different methods and priorities, the three aforementioned architects espoused a form of modern architecture that reflected a much broader movement that sought to change – with only partial success – the aesthetics and ethics of architecture, and even of life, at the time. All three taught their students to break with the styles of the past to offer a progressive architecture that met the era’s physical, aesthetic and cultural needs.

Of course, these men were not the only émigrés from Nazi Germany, but their stories (and those of other Bauhaus figures), can help us better understand this emigration that is often widely misunderstood.

The Bauhaus American dream?

When we refer to this emigration of German architects and intellectuals (or those culturally linked to Weimar Germany), the first image that comes to mind is emigration to the US, the land of opportunity – The Brutalist’s fictitious architect László Toth does just this.

This migration is the best known, certainly the most common, but not the only one. Moreover, it usually inspires images of the individualistic architect, a (male, of course) creative genius who puts his constructive ideals above everything else. This image was popularised by Ayn Rand’s 1943 novel The Fountainhead, and by the 1949 King Vidor film of the same title, starring Gary Cooper.

Gary Cooper and Kent Smith in The Fountainhead, 1949. [Image: Warner Brothers]

In truth, the picture is more complex and problematic. While our three architects all have elements in common – a commitment to modern and transformative architecture that shaped, and was shaped by, contemporary life – they did not all emigrate to the US. Nor did they go at the same time, or with the same aspirations, political and ethical commitment, or prizing their own architecture above all else.

Walter Gropius, who was from a well-off family, initially left Germany in 1934 for the UK before settling in Boston, Massachusetts in 1937 as a prominent faculty member of the newly established Harvard University Graduate School of Design. There, in addition to teaching, he set up an architectural practice called The Architects’ Collaborative.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, undoubtedly the most brilliant of the group, remained in Germany until 1938, where he continued to work in a not entirely hospitable political climate. He eventually settled in Chicago as director of the Illinois Institute of Technology, and began a brilliant career that would make him the US’ (an perhaps the world’s) defining post-war architect. His work was key to, among other things, developing the corporate office building that would epitomise American expansionist capitalism after the war.

Portrait of Lilly Reich. [Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA]

Here, it is worth mentioning his longstanding Berlin business partner, designer and architect Lilly Reich, who also taught at the Bauhaus. Until recently Reich was overlooked, both for her direct role in much of Mies van del Rohe’s work and her individual output. Fortunately, researchers such as Laura Martínez de Guereñu are now shining a light on her life and work.

For her part, Reich opted to remain in her native Germany. Her status as a woman would undoubtedly have contributed to this decision, though it is difficult to say to what extent.

Socialist architectural visions

As we can see, there were indeed women architects working in Germany at the time, even if their gender rendered them all but invisible.

There were also, undoubtedly, many architects whose profile did not fit the mould of the strong-willed creative genius, but rather that of the progressive, politically committed intellectual. In many cases, these people were very close to communism and the alternative offered by Soviet Russia at the time.

Hannes Meyer in 1928 [Photo: Hermann Bunzel/Wikimedia Commons]

Hannes Meyer, the least well-known of the three Bauhaus directors mentioned here, chose this other path.

His search for the ideal place to work did not include the individualistic, commercialised society of American capitalism, but rather, following his own communist leanings, that of the USSR, where he arrived in the late 1930s. His model was that of the architect fully in service to society, and he shunned any aesthetic or artistic protagonism. He was convinced that this type of architecture could only be practised in a classless society where the means of production belonged to the proletariat.

He remained in Moscow until 1936, when the country, under Stalin’s dictatorship, became increasingly closed off to foreign presence. After returning to Germany, he emigrated again to Mexico in 1939, and worked prolifically for ten years amidst the progressive social and political reform programmes of president Lázaro Cárdenas. He eventually returned to his native Switzerland, where he died in 1954.

The émigrés who followed in Meyer’s footsteps not only wanted to avoid the US, but also sought refuge where they could (or believed they could) best pursue their ideals. Instead of beautiful buildings, they envisioned an architecture that would help forge a new society and a new humanity.

In fact, as per the architect and scholar Daniel Talesnik, there was arguably a “Red Bauhaus” made up of modern architects who, following their escape from Nazi Germany, worked for the Soviet government.

These other cases, whose trajectory we have barely sketched here, have been less well known to both the general public and, until recently, to academics. However, this does not diminish their significance, and they deserve a greater place in history than they seem to have been given.

José Vela Castillo is a professor of theory, history and architectural projects at the IE School of Architecture and Design at IE University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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