Interview Directory 

ART/IN FOCUS

Name: Dr Anke Blümm

Occupation: Research associate and curator at the Bauhaus Museum of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar

AM: Ms Dr Blümm, who is coming to the opening on 8 May?

Dr Anke Blümm: We are celebrating the historic day of surrender with a grand double opening of the Forced Labour Museum together with our exhibition. Claudia Roth is expected to speak, the Thuringian Minister President Mr Ramelow, the State Chancellery and the City of Weimar will be present. It will be a very big event for Weimar.

How did this exhibition come about in the first place?

As early as 1993, there was a conference and a publication by Winfried Nerdinger entitled „Bauhaus-Moderne im Nationalsozialismus: zwischen Anbiederung und Verfolgung“ ("Bauhaus modernism under National Socialism: between ingratiation and persecution"). But this did not lead to an exhibition. In retrospect, it must be said that the topic of Bauhaus and National Socialism remained underrepresented at the anniversary events for the 90th and 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus. When 90 years of Bauhaus were celebrated in Berlin and New York in 2009, we realised that the National Socialist era had been neglected. It was clear that something bigger had to be done. Weimar was predestined for such an exhibition: This was the place where the Bauhaus was founded. The proximity to the Buchenwald concentration camp has always linked Weimar with National Socialism.

"Of course, it's much more nuanced than that, and obviously the time is only now right to bring the issue back into the spotlight."

Your exhibition wants to break the illusion that the Bauhaus is the only good and persecuted modernism. 

Not the only one, but good modernism. With the first major Bauhaus exhibition of the post-war period in 1968, the 1920s and 1930s were taken up because this served as a positive example. The Bauhaus had been closed in 1933 under pressure from the Nazis, so it was possible to say: "Now we can pick up where the Bauhaus left off". At the time, this was probably also a certain protective mechanism to deal with the guilt of the Holocaust. Of course, it's much more nuanced than that, and obviously the time is only now right to bring the issue back into the spotlight

Irmgard Soerensen-Popitz Ihre Werbung und die Frau ©Bauhaus Dessau Foundation

"The state of Thuringia was an inglorious pioneer of National Socialist art policy."

Over 70 works by artists such as Lyonel Feininger and Paul Klee were declared "inferior" art in 1930 and removed from the Palace Museum in Weimar. Were they returned? 

The state of Thuringia was an inglorious pioneer of National Socialist art policy. The first state government with National Socialist participation was formed as early as 1930. The new NSDAP Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick, immediately implemented an aggressive National Socialist cultural policy. The Bauhaus had long since disappeared by this time; it had been expelled to Dessau in 1925. The palace still housed the Modern Art Department, in which six rooms were dedicated to the 20th century: Bauhaus paintings, drawings and paintings by the avant-garde of the 1920s. Minister Frick ordered these 70 works to be taken down.

Weimar itself did not have a large acquisition budget, and many of the works were loans from the artists, which were returned to them. The purchased paintings, including two Klees and a Feininger, were stored in the depot in Weimar. These paintings were not confiscated and destroyed as later in the 1937 action, but remained the property of the collections. In 1937, the Nazi confiscation commission systematically went through the museums throughout the Reich and confiscated the works that had been removed from Weimar in 1930. The National Socialists no longer wanted the art labelled as degenerate in Germany and began to sell it abroad. The "Dying Plants" by Paul Klee from our exhibition are now in the MoMA, and Feininger's "Gemeroda" is now in the Whitney Museum in New York. 

"It is not the approach of our exhibition to level accusations of guilt. We want to show the complexity and contradictions."

You found out that some former Bauhaus students later took part in National Socialist propaganda exhibitions. To what extent is this about the seduction of fascism or simply about survival? Is it justified to level accusations of guilt? 

It is not the approach of our exhibition to level accusations of guilt. We want to show the complexity and contradictions. The graphic artists had a modern education - their skills were needed and they could not foresee how the regime would develop. In 1934, some of them accepted a commission for the exhibition "Deutsches Volk, Deutsche Arbeit" (German People, German Labour) - an exhibition of achievements at the time - and contributed the most innovative designs. We simply wanted to show what was. We can show that propaganda elements were incorporated into a modern design and that they were subtle and not immediately obvious to everyone.

Which life story of a Bauhaus member particularly interested you? 

Fritz Ertl was an architecture student of Hannes Meyer, who had received a diploma from Mies van der Rohe. After returning to his native Austria, he joined the SS in 1938. It was Ertl who drew the first site plan for the new Auschwitz concentration camp. He stayed in Auschwitz for two and a half years and then continued to work for the SS. It is known that he was tried and acquitted in the 1970s. We would like to ask him today how he was able to reconcile all this with his education.

I am also moved by the life of the Jewish ceramist Margarete Heymann-Loebenstein. Her Norma service, which she produced for 10 years in her flourishing Marwitz ceramics factory, was very popular. Her factory was taken over by Hedwig Bollhagen in 1934 at a price far below its value, who continued to produce her crockery without licence fees. In the exhibition, we are showing two milk jugs which illustrate that the original designs were simply copied. Heymann-Loebenstein emigrated, but was never able to build on her earlier success. The fate of Heymann-Loebenstein was the subject of the exhibition "The 4 Bauhaus Girls" in 2019. Hedwig Bollhagen never made a clear statement about the events until her death in 2001.

When we talk about persecuted artists, can we also relate this to the present day?

Of course, during my exhibition I asked myself what would happen if this happened today. After 1933, all Bauhaus artists were in a predicament. As they were no longer free in their art, some adapted more, some less. Their works were confiscated or destroyed, but no Bauhaus artist was arrested or murdered simply because of their training. If someone was arrested or murdered, it was because of their Jewish origins or because of their political views. 

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Franz Ehrlich - Design of the lettering of the Buchenwald concentration camp, 1938 ©Franz Ehrlich, community of the heirs after Franz Ehrlich

Lyonel Feininger, Gelmeroda VIII, 1921, ©VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2024