Map 2019
2019 will mark the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus School of Art & Architecture. It will be celebrated in Germany as a national cultural event by the Bauhaus Alliance 2019 with new museum buildings, exhibitions and numerous other events in 12 federal states and is being funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. The federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia joined the Bauhaus Alliance 2019 in 2015. Its contribution to the anniversary events is map 2019 Bauhaus Network Krefeld, an event concept conceptualised by Projekt MIK e.V. It will implement this research, exhibition and event project in cooperation with the federal state of NRW and the city of Krefeld. Bauhaus in Krefeld? When people hear Bauhaus, they may probably think of Weimar and Dessau and Berlin. Or of Stuttgart with its Weißenhof housing estate. Now they can add Krefeld to the list, too. Because the city, located in the Lower Rhine region and once Germany’s silk & velvet metropolis, has many more connections to the famous art school of the 1920s than most people know. Oskar Schlemmer, the famous painter and former Bauhaus teacher, was quite astonished when he visited Krefeld during the Second World War and not only found his former colleague Georg Muche there but also a number of his former students. They taught at the local School of Textile Design, worked as architects for the city and its industry or created designs for one of the city’s many textile factories. Overall, there were 25 Bauhaus members who have found a position or carried out assignments as designers or architects in Krefeld since 1927. They did so despite the fact that even before 1933, the legendary Bauhaus art school, this nucleus of the avant-garde, was decried by the Nazis as “bolshevik” and “un-German”. For the Bauhaus Anniversary 2019, Projekt MIK e.V. in cooperation with the Federal State of North Rhine- Westphalia and the city of Krefeld will, for the first time, provide the opportunity to access and relive this chapter of cultural and industrial history in the Rhineland:
See and listen: Exhibition in the pavilion by Thomas Schütte
Visitors will be able to enter and walk through this extraordinary exhibition site, a sculpture specially designed and constructed by the renowned artist Thomas Schütte for the anniversary Bauhaus 100. Inside the pavilion, films, historic documents and tours will tell the story of Bauhaus and its 25 members, who lived, learned and worked in Krefeld.
Search and discover: Traces of Bauhaus history in Krefeld
Several walks and tours through the city will lead visitors to the rare buildings of the last Bauhaus director, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and his students, Erich Holthoff and Hans Volger, to the architectural works of Egon Eiermann and Bernhard Pfau, and to the lost sites of the textile industry. With the help of knowledgeable guides or an architecture guide app on their smartphones, visitors will be able to follow the steps of Bauhaus members and old school friends who came together once more in Krefeld. They will get to know the city’s representatives and the companies that paved their way.