The International Journal of the History of Sport

ISSN: 0952-3367 (Print) 1743-9035 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fhsp20

Physical education at the Bauhaus, 1919-33

Swantje Scharenberg
To cite this article: Swantje Scharenberg (2003) Physical education at the Bauhaus,
1919-33, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 20:3, 115-127, DOI:
10.1080/09523360412331305813
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09523360412331305813

Published online: 08 Sep 2010.

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Physical Education at the Bauhaus,

191933
SWA N T JE S C H ARENBERG

The bauhaus was founded by Walter Gropius in April 1919 and became, in
the following years, one of the leading arts and crafts centres in Europe. One
reason for this was the equal importance given to architecture, art, sculpture
and crafts as well as industrial work. This idea of an integrated whole, fixed
in the human being itself, acquires sense and meaning only through vivid
life.1 The other reason was the international approach. Gropius derived the
inspiration for the idea and building of the Bauhaus from Ruskin and Morris
of England, Van de Velde of Belgium and the German Werkbund, which
consciously looked for and found initial ways to reunite the world of work
with that of creative artists.2 The staff was recruited from all over the world
and included such avant-garde artists as Johannes Itten from Switzerland,
the German-American Lyonel Feininger, the Russian Wassily Kandinsky
and the Hungarian Lzl Moholy-Nagy. They brought with them different
cultural and political ideas, which slowly coalesced to form a unique
project, sometimes even described as an order. Until 1933, when this place
of learning3 had to be closed down under pressure from the National
Socialists, this school was attended by eager young people from all over
Europe. Some of them were already adherents of either the Lebensreform or
the German Youth movement, two state-independent movements which
strove for a healthy community and a renewed culture as a reaction to rising
technology, while demanding a return to the body4 as the core of their
physical and philosophical ideals.5
Gropius aim was to create a sustainable relationship between work and
life. Today it is impossible to reform just one partial object, we have to take
a good look at the entirety of life itself: housing, the education of children,
gymnastics and much more.6 For this purpose he asked outstanding
protagonists to join his school where the final programme was the idea of
objective teaching. Gropius was convinced that the objective method of
teaching, even if the way to this is much longer and more thorny than the
autocratic method, not only safeguards us from imitation and
egalitarianism, it protects the uniqueness in every creative personality and
simultaneously promotes the common spiritual coherence of the times.7
This very open situation stimulated people to contribute their own ideas, if
The International Journal of the History of Sport, Vol.20, No.3 (September 2003), pp.115127
PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON

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only for a certain amount of time. Physical education at the Bauhaus was
always the personal preference of the leading individuals that determined
the syllabus, which included artistic gymnastics as well as dance and sports
in logical sequences.
The aim of this paper is to show that physical education at the Bauhaus
was used
1. to experience the space, rhythms and movements of the body and to
integrate these feelings into the students artistic expressions,
2. to heal neuroses through physical activities which followed certain rules
and regulations suitable to creating a community spirit,
3. to model art on bodily movements by looking for the essence at the heart
of both.
Johannes Itten and his Preparatory Course
The Swiss painter, Johannes Itten, was one of the first teachers at the
Bauhaus. When he started his work in autumn 1919 his main contribution
was to introduce a compulsory preparatory course, which adopted an
integrated approach. As a convinced reforming educator he did not want to
create a special school or to intrude on the personality of his students, but
he had absolute respect for the individuality of the learner8 and wanted to
foster hidden talents. Itten, apart from his artistic talents, had himself been
a successful competitive artistic gymnast. He also played soccer, did track
and field and played the piano. In the course of his own studies he tried to
combine all these different activities, and from 1913 his teacher Adolf
Hlzel encouraged him to do so. Hlzel himself did not start working until
he had completed 100 tuning-up exercises, like a violin player.9
Ittens idea from the very start of Bauhaus education was more
sophisticated. Following Platos idea of the three aspects of education
gymnos (physical education), arts (especially music) and mathematics
(education designed to encourage constructive, logical thinking) he
developed a training system that was suited to the individual character both
intuitively and objectively. It revealed the technical possibilities implicit in
disregarding the rules of form and colour in art, and developed them to
perfection in the realization of individual ideas.10
All he wanted to achieve with the preparatory course was to develop an
instrument to promote the talents of the student, to let the learner find his or
her own form of self expression and to select people for special training.
Itten, a trained primary school teacher, considered the human being in itself
to be his pedagogic responsibility, a nature to be encouraged and developed:
an evolution of the senses, an increase in the ability to think and to

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experience both a form of relaxation11 and a training for the organs

and their functions these are the methods a pedagogically responsible
teacher uses.12
Both Gropius and Itten did not want students to specialize early, but
rather to have a solid base for their chosen arts and crafts. With this
introductory course he developed a trans-individual language of form
especially for the Bauhaus.13
Itten integrated sport into this course foremost as a means of physical
control.
First of all the artist and craftsman has to control his body in such a
way that he follows each change of the mind. His hand must be agile,
relaxed, firm and yet smooth, rapid and yet careful, well-shaped and
strong, his arm, in fact his whole body has to be trained in such a way
that every muscle, every ligament is subject to his will. Thus the
student will very easily learn what it means to work with his hands.14
What sounds like Pierre de Coubertins gymnastique utilitaire, which was
used directly to achieve those skills required by new technology but which
also wanted people to do crafts as mental health training,15 is, actually, quite
different. Ittens idea was not to adapt the human being to technology, but
rather to bend the body to the will of the soul. He complained that artistic
gymnastics exercises were bereft of content and mindless, as if we do
artistic gymnastics only for the sake of artistic gymnastics and to improve
our muscles. According to his definition, artistic gymnastics was a part of
gymnastics, but was not able to give the body expressiveness, experience,
was not able to arouse these feelings in the body.16 Usually Itten started his
lessons with gymnastic exercises, to experience, to feel, to unleash frantic
movements, to shake the body. Then exercises stressing harmony follow.17
The training of harmonization focused on rhythm and breath18 and
should develop from flow and order, from equilibrium and coordination
through as the painter Paul Klee put it body massage. Klee interpreted
Ittens individual posture control of each student, and his method of
ordering the students to develop a certain rhythm, as training a machine to
function instinctively.19 In this part of the course Itten wanted his students
to free themselves mentally and to find their individual rhythm as a
subjective aspect, but also recognize objectively that rhythm is a
fundamental principle.20 Physically they should, for example, draw with
both hands at the same time to compensate for the lack of skilfulness of the
left hand.
This preparatory course already put into practice what the Austrian
reform educator Margarethe Streicher would write three years later:

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To feel and experience ones own body as a spatial object, initiating a

movement, the sequence of actions of different muscle groups, the use
of gravity and swing, the correlation between breathing and
movement, things which are in many cases still regarded as
insignificant and irrelevant today. That each movement structures
space, and therefore is an admittedly transient work of art, and that it
also structures time, and is therefore at the same time a work of music
for some this sounds like discovery and for others, madness. This
different assessment clearly shows how little known and how little
understood rules of movement still are today.21
From the very start, Ittens main interest was to find out how form
emerges from movement. He viewed the coherence of movement and form
as identity and stressed the emotional more than the intellectual.22
All life reveals itself to the human being by means of movement. All
life reveals itself in forms. So all forms are movement and obviously
all movement, form. The forms are receptacles of movement and
movement the nature of form Every spot, every line, area, every
shadow, every light and every colour are forms originating from
movement, which will again in turn originate movement If I want
to experience a line, I have to move my hand corresponding to the
line, or I have to follow the line with my senses, thus moving my
spirit. Finally I can imagine a line mentally, I can see it, then I am
mentally moved. So these are three different levels of being moved
In front of me there is a thistle. My motor nerves feel a jagged, rapid
movement. My senses, the sense of touch and face, grasp the sharp
pointiness of its form, and my mind sees its nature It is obvious that
I can draw a proper thistle only if the movement of my hand, my eyes
and my mind correspond exactly to the intense pointed, pricking,
painful form of a thistle: which means character of movement equals
character of form. This is the main statement of our whole research.23
Today Ittens preference for gymnastics is often explained by his
conversion to Mazdaznan,24 a Far Eastern doctrine of salvation. The reason
for this is that one cannot find a difference between the philosophy of
Mazdaznan and anthroposophic philosophy as well as expressionism. All
three focused on the individual, on the whole picture, and above all on
morals. And these morals again and again lead to the integrated educated
human being, therefore far over and above the one dimensional educated
craftsman.25
The return to the body and the individual no longer played a major role
when Itten left the Bauhaus in Spring 1923. The preparatory course now

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focused on technology. In 192324 there were no gymnastics on the

syllabus. The crafts and work done by hand as well as the individual
training of personality, which were so important for Ittens teaching
concept, lost their meaning.26 The founding phase of the Bauhaus was over,27
and a negative opinion was held about the way art and muscles interact; in
the Bauhaus magazine of 1928 it was observed that neither sport nor
technology stimulates contemporary art creatively.28
Introducing Sport
In 1928 one of the most important functionalists in 1920s architecture,
Hannes Meyer, became director of the Bauhaus, now situated in Dessau.
The newly-built school, with a gymnasium and a playing field, had already
been planned when Gropius was still the principal (in 1925). He regarded
the gym, as well as the flat roof stable enough also to be used for
workouts29 as welfare facilities, that is, facilities for the good of the
students.30 In earlier years Bauhaus students, accompanied by their director
Gropius, had often gone for a bath in the Elbe River in their leisure time.
Hannes Meyer thought differently and introduced sports and sciences,
such as physics and chemistry, into the syllabus. He regarded a university
without physical exercise as an absurdity, and used the introduction of
sport to combat the proverbial collective neuroses of the Bauhaus, the
result of a one-sided emphasis on brainwork.31 Now Saturday was devoted
to sports,32 and Meyer employed two physical education teachers: Otto
Bttner was responsible for mens sport and mens gymnastics, while Carla
Grosch was in charge of physical education for women. In 1929 Meyer even
requested public funds (2,000 marks) to improve the ground conditions of
the playing field.33 Under the headline Life at the Bauhaus some
photographs show us what the sport was like.34 Otto Bttner taught track and
field and used to take an active part in his lessons by demonstrating the
correct techniques. Carla Grosch was also a very active instructor, and
taught the girls gymnastics all year round, mostly outside on the flat roof,
because sun and light played an important role in the ideology of the
Bauhaus. Even in wintertime when the temperature was five degrees below
zero, young female weavers went outside dressed in tops and shorts to work
out with medicine balls.
Hannes Meyer regarded the Bauhaus as a social phenomenon and saw
the final aim of all the work of the Bauhaus to be the summation of all life
forces to promote a harmonious form of society.35 Art itself could be used
as an instrument of cultural and social regeneration.36 Meyer promoted the
idea of sport because it mirrors a sense of community with well-established
rules and regulations. In his essay The New World, a cultural programme
for a developing society, which stressed that valuable new characteristics

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are shaped by the rapid progress of science and technology,37 he confronted

art with sport.
G. Paluccas dances, von Labans movement ensembles and D.
Mensendiecks functional gymnastics (Turnen) are driving out the
aesthetic eroticism of the nude in painting. The stadium has carried
the day against the art museum and physical reality has taken the place
of beautiful illusion. Sport merges the individual into the mass. Sport
is becoming the university of collective feeling: Suzanne Lenglens
cancellation of a match disappoints hundreds of thousands.38
Breitenstrters defeat sends a shiver through hundreds of thousands.
Hundreds of thousands follow Nurmis race over 10,000 metres on the
running track The community rules the individual. Each age
demands its own form The demands we make on life today are all
of the same nature depending on social stratification. The surest sign
of true community is the satisfaction of the same needs by the same
means The degree of our standardization is an index of our
communal productive system The revolution in our attitude of
mind to the reorganization of our world calls for a change in our
media of expression Instead of the static imitation of movement in
sculpture, we have movement itself (synchronized film, illuminated
advertising, gymnastics, eurhythmics, dancing) The art of felt
imitation is in the process of being dismantled. Art is becoming
invention and controlled reality. Art is becoming reality.39
In the organizational scheme that he designed for the Bauhaus, he
considered sports, the stage and the Bauhaus orchestra to be a unit with
three study-groups, but only sport was taught by specialists. Carla Grosch,40
the physical education teacher, was the new woman who became a public
advertisement for the Bauhaus,41 where women were not only allowed to
study but also to teach. Grosch had an athletic figure, short hair and a certain
charisma. She was very much in love with life, the link between sport and
art, between the teacher and the Bauhaus actor or scholar. She had been in
contact with people from the Bauhaus since 1922, especially with the Klee
family. Trained at the school of Gret Palucca in Dresden,42 she was not only
a teacher of gymnastics and physical education but also took part in the
work of the stage department led by Oscar Schlemmer. While Palucca
taught her to discover individual creativity through dance, to react
according to the rhythm of her own body43 and actively to determine space
and music, Schlemmer focused on precision of movement, the human being
as a biomechanical machine, involving rules for functioning right up to the
dematerialization of the standardized body into movements and
expressions, which acquire a symbolic character.44 As Oskar Bie put it: The

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Bauhaus stage has discovered its special mission. It is called: the art of
movement in relationship to the pure expression of space and the pure
expression of material, the integration of human rhythm into a rhythm of
absolute structure.45
In 1928 and 1929 Grosch participated in different dance presentations.46
She also presented a work, which she created with Albert Menzel, called
colour dance where she started to dance in front of a white illuminated
square wall, which was brightened by horizontal colour projections during
her performance.47 This central focus on a woman who, in public, was able
on the one hand to act with her body under total control and, on the other,
to deliberately lose control of her body in space thus demonstrating other
possible forms of movement, proved that it was possible for women to act
according to their own ideas, in some areas at least, and therefore
strengthened the position of power of women in society.48
Looking for the Nucleus of Movement and Art
After World War I the threat of an approaching formlessness seemed to
spread throughout Europe. The regrettable situation was that the modern
human being no longer had any real feeling for his body and therefore he
also had no feeling for a common (social) form, and vice-versa.
Educationalists and artists thought the solution to this lack of orientation
could be found in building up a form from the inside49 by searching for the
nucleus of the human being. Margarethe Streicher50 based her theory on the
regular rhythm of the body, whatever work it undertakes. Therefore the
validity of all physical work is actually a standard for defining the accuracy
of physical rules.51 In order for physical exercises to be accepted as a
general means of education by broad sections of the population, the
principles of artistic physical education and of (artistic) gymnastics have to
be adapted to each other. This is possible if there is no longer a
differentiation between exchanging knowledge and educating the whole
human being. The task of the teacher of science as well as of gymnastics is
the same: to facilitate the best development of the power and talents of a
child, which is also the best preparation for work Physical work and
therefore physical education are also necessities of life.52
The basis of good physical education is knowledge of the body you want
to educate. Therefore Streicher suggested that instead of copying exercises
mechanically, one should observe the movements several times.
To find pure movement the student has to let an impulse swing out
in his/her body without hindering it arbitrarily anywhere, only
allowing the interplay of his/her joints. If you listen to your body and

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concentrate on its internal rules of form, you will experience physical

liberation. Thus all individual movements will turn into movements in
accordance with the law of the body, right and therefore beautiful.53
Released power, as well as talents that have been submerged, will now
become creative. The final step is to apply the individual realization of form
learned in physical education to life.54
Artists had to take a different approach from Streichers to build up their
bodies to their satisfaction, but they ended up with the same result: only
knowledge of the rules of the body and of the rules of nature can create art.55
After the Bauhaus artists had been shown what dance and sport are like, and
after they had gained a little physical education experience and its influence
on their own bodies, they became receptive to Paluccas new-found rule of
movement, the most precise structure of tension-filled living space, or, as
Lzl Moholy-Nagy put it: an elementary expression of physics in close
relationship with spatial dynamics no longer an expression of ritualistic,
sexual motives or an illustration of wonder.56 We ourselves swing in her
dance, move by using the power of her vitality and self-control. Palucca
condenses space, she structures it: space extends, sinks and floats
changing in all dimensions The tensions of space enter her body, occur
through her body, with incredibly natural body-mind unity. She is the purest
among the dancers of today.57 By looking at Palucca and her dancing, the
power of individual expression as art and the range of different ways of
presentation became obvious. The work of art, as it emerges from the
whole human being, represents this human being and has no other dynamics
than the dynamics of just these energies of its character and its condition.58
In expressive dance, form and content fused in a unique process, where the
audience became part of the art work,59 while all other art forms could only
show movements condensed into one moment.60 Palucca, for example,
was the first to select music according to its usefulness for her dance; music
interpreted by her very personally was only a means to implement her
own ideas. She wanted to be the active component that introduced ideas.
The wild jumps and expressive poses of Carla Grosch and Gret Palucca61
attracted Klee and Kandinsky, who were interested in translating them into
drawings. They used photographs taken by Charlotte Rudolph to transform
body tensions into geometric forms. Wassily Kandinsky especially saw the
artistic as more essential than the naturalistic62 and was so impressed by this
form of biomechanics that he asked Palucca to dance routines with circles
and triangles.63
The Bauhaus Magazine statement of 1928, that reason and movement,
those moments that determine sport, could better be recorded through the
photomechanics of a film camera than through the personal soul filter of an

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artist,64 was no longer true. The expressionistic artist had broadened his
field of action by presenting the permanent tension between the inner and
the outside world. The concrete should not only be shown, but be visible,
nature no longer reproduced, but represented via art.65
Conclusion
The question of form, and therefore body, determined the work of the
Bauhaus from start to finish. Physical education played different roles
thereby. Physical exercises were used to train and prepare the body for the
subsequent art work. Following the ideas of the Bauhaus reform-minded
educators, the human being had to be given an integrated education. The
unifying power of sport was implemented to cure highly sensitive and
individualistic artists of their neuroses and to find, via sport, a new approach
to society and a living example where women, too, had an active role.
The body, seen as a focus for artistic as well as physical expression,
especially dance, was, however different the approach, another way to
unify a society facing the threat of a common lack of form. It took quite
some time for the people at the Bauhaus to realize that sport is more than a
matter of developing muscles but is also an art form and that art is a part of
physical education.
Deutscher Turner-Bund
NOTES
1. Walter Gropius, Idee und Aufbau des Staatlichen Bauhauses, in Walter Gropius (ed.),
Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar 19191923 (Weimar and Munich: Bauhaus-Verlag, 1923), p.9.
Walter Gropius, Die neue Bau-Gesinnung, quoted in Probst and Schdlich, Walter Gropius
(Werkverzeichnis Teil III: Probst, Hartmut Ernst-Verlag) (1925), p.96.
2. Gropius, Idee und Aufbau des Staatlichen Bauhauses, p.8. For the educational-historical
coherence of craftsmanship and pedagogical motive see Rainer Wick, bauhaus Pdagogik
(Kln: Dumont, 1982, 4. berarbeitete und aktualisierte Auflage 1994), p.67f.
3. Gerhard Marcks an das Staatliche Bauhaus, 2.1.1924, in K.-H. Hter, Das Bauhaus in
Weimar (Berlin, 1983), p.219.
4. See Michel Foucault, Mikrophysik der Macht. ber Strafjustiz, Psychiatrie und Medizin
(Berlin: Merre Verlag, 1976), p.105ff.
5. See Rolf Bothe, Peter Hahn and Hans Christoph von Tavel, Vorwort, in idem. (eds.), Das
frhe Bauhaus und Johannes Itten. Katalogbuch anllich des 75. Grndungsjubilums des
Staatlichen Bauhauses in Weimar (Ostfildern-Ruit, 1994), p.7. Thomas Alkemeyer, Krper,
Kultur, Politik. Von der Muskelreligion Pierre de Coubertins zur Inszenierung von Macht
in den Olympischen Spielen von 1936 (Frankfurt and New York: Campus-Verlag, 1996),
p.65f.
6. Letter from Walter Gropius to Eckhart (Adolf Behne) dated 2 June 1920. Quoted in W.
Nerdinger, Walter Gropius. Ausstellungskatalog Bauhaus-Archiv (Berlin: Gebr. Mann,
1985), p.58.
7. Walter Gropius, Die Bauhaus-Idee Kampf um neue Erziehungsgrundlagen, in Eckhard
Neumann (ed.), Bauhaus und Bauhusler: Erinnerungen und Bekenntnisse (Kln: Hallwag,

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1985), p.17f., quotation p.18.

8. He had learned this principle during his time at the teachers training seminar in Bern.
9. See Carry van Biema, Farben und Formen als lebendige Krfte (Jena: Ravensburger
Buchverlag, 1930), p.130.
10. Johannes Itten, Mein Vorkurs am Bauhaus. Gestaltungs- und Formenlehre (Ravensburg:
Maier, 1963), p.10. Johannes Itten and Zur Ausstellung, Aus meinem Unterricht (Orell
Fssli, 1939), in Willy Rotzler (ed.), Johannes Itten. Werke und Schriften (Zurich: DuMont,
1978), p.244. Wick, bauhaus Pdagogik, p.120.
11.
Relaxation of the body can be achieved in three different ways: first through movements
of arms and legs, through bending and twisting of the whole body, while the mobility of
the spinal column has to be paid special attention. The second action is to keep the
standing, sitting or prostrate body absolutely still and to relax it through mental
concentration limb by limb. Only in this way can inner organs be relaxed. The third
possibility, to relax the body, to equalise and harmonise it, is to use tonal vibrations.
Firstly students have to train how to build a tone, they have to learn to feel where inside
their body the tones vibrate. (Johannes Itten, Mein Vorkurs am Bauhaus. Gestaltungs- und
Formenlehre [Ravensburg: Maier, 1963], p.12.)

12.
13.

14.
15.

16.

17.

18.
19.

Margarethe Streicher describes a wave of movement initiated by tension and relaxation:

Every human movement is achieved by working the muscles. But after the work has been
done the muscles have to return to zero tension, muscles natural state While relaxation
exercises help to learn how to differentiate grades of tension they also help to learn about
gravity. Comprehending a movement is like looking at pictures in art appreciation.
Margarethe Streicher, Was kann das Turnen von den modernen Systemen lernen? (Februar
1924), in Karl Gaulhofer and Margarethe Streicher, Natrliches Turnen. Gesammelte
Aufstze I (Vienna and Leipzig: Verlag Jugend und Volk, 1931), pp.10710, quotation p.109.
Johannes Itten, Pdagogische Fragmente einer Fomenlehre (1930), in Rotzler (ed.),
Johannes Itten. Werke und Schriften, p.232.
See Wick, bauhaus Pdagogik, p.35. Friedhelm Krll, Bauhaus 19191933. Knstler
zwischen Isolation und kollektiver Praxis (Dsseldorf: DuMont, 1974), p.55. Wick (p.20)
points out the basic conflict between free artistic self-expression on the one hand and the
search for a language of form, adequate to the needs of mass-production in a high-developed
industrial society on the other.
Johannes Itten, Kunst-Hand-Werk, quoted in Rotzler (ed.), Johannes Itten. Werke und
Schriften, pp.225 and 226.
See Alkemeyer, Krper, Kultur, Politik, p.112. There were other schools also which
combined physical education and arts and crafts, such as the Dresdener Werksttten fr
Handwerkskunst in Hellerau where from 1911 onwards Emile Jaques-Dalcroze pushed
forward the idea of an educational establishment of rhythm (Karl Storck, E. JaquesDalcroze. Seine Stellung und Aufgabe in unserer Zeit [Stuttgart, 1912], p.88), or the
Loheland school, see footnote 50.
Johannes Itten, Tagebuch X, 2.3.1918, in Eva Badura-Triska (ed.), Johannes Itten:
Tagebcher. Stuttgart 19131916; Vienna 19161919 (Vienna: Lckeer-Verlag, 1990, 2 vols)
p.387. Margarethe Streicher agreed with his opinion. She says that artistic gymnastics often do
not accept the form rules of the body but let forms of style determine forms of movement:
Streicher, Was kann das Turnen von den modernen Systemen lernen?, pp.10710, esp. p.108.
Itten, Tagebuch X, 2.3.1918, p.387. In 1919 Itten brought Gertrud Grunow to the Bauhaus.
She taught harmonization to rediscover the personal internal equilibrium of colours, tones,
sentiments and forms through exercises of movement and concentration. Itten and she
believed that only a harmonious human being could be creative. See Bauhaus archive and
Magdalena Droste (eds.), bauhaus 19191933 (Kln: Taschen, 1993), p.33.
Rhythm, especially, was seen as determining the being and was traced back to the periodic
function of the breath. Rudolf Lmmel, Der moderne Tanz (Berlin, 1928), p.16. If you listen
to your own rhythm you will become a harmonious person.
Description of Paul Klee 1921, in Felix Klee (ed.), Paul Klee. Briefe an die Familie
18931940 (Kln: DuMont, 1979), vol.2, p.970. For body and soul see Gabriele Klein,

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20.
21.
22.
23.
24.

25.

26.
27.
28.
29.

30.
31.
32.

33.
34.
35.
36.
37.

125

FrauenKrperTanz. Eine Zivilisationsgeschichte des Tanzes (Weinheim and Berlin: Heyne,

1992), p.146.
See Rainer K. Wick, Zwischen Rationalitt und Spiritualitt Johannes Ittens Vorkurs am
Bauhaus, in Bothe, Hahn and von Tavel (eds.), Das frhe Bauhaus und Johannes Itten.,
pp.11767, esp. p.138f.
Margarethe Streicher, Zur Erneuerung der Tanzkunst (Juli 1922), in Gaulhofer and
Streicher, Natrliches Turnen. Gesammelte Aufstze, pp.2630, quotation p.29.
See Wick, bauhaus Pdagogik, p.104.
Johannes Itten, Analysen alter Meister (1921), in Rotzler (ed.), Johannes Itten. Werke und
Schriften, p.220ff.
Mazdaznan is a word of Zen language: Ma = good or God; zda = thought; znan
(abbreviated from jasnan) = masterly; all in all it means master of Gods thought or the
good thought, that all things masters to the best. Mazdaznan wants to be a guide, which is
originated by God and leads all need and disordered to a good, high aim. Kurt Hutten, Seher,
Grbler, Enthusiasten. Sekten und religise Sondergemeinschaften der Gegenwart (Stuttgart:
Quell Verlag, 1962), p.288. In Germany this doctrine of salvation was introduced by its
spiritual leader, Dr Otoman Zar-Adusht Hanish, in 1907. For his philosophy see Otoman ZarAdusht Hanish, Offenbarungen (Leipzig: Mazdazen, 1931).
Ludger Busch, Das Bauhaus und Mazdaznan, in Bothe, Hahn and von Tavel (eds.), Das
frhe Bauhaus und Johannes Itten, pp.8390, quotation p.85. Mazdaznan included a rigorous
diet and vegetarian food as well as ritual body exercises like breath control, movement and
relaxation exercises. After Itten visited a seminar of Mazdaznans in 1921 he introduced
vegetarian food at the Bauhaus.
See Bauhaus Archive and Droste, Bauhaus 19191933, p.46.
On the division into the three phases of foundation (191923), consolidation (192328) and
disintegration (192833), see Krll, Bauhaus 19191933.
Bauhaus 2 (1928), 4, 29.
See Walter Gropius, Bauhausbauten Dessau (Mainz and Berlin: Kupterberg, 1974), p.54.
The successful experiments, that were made with the construction of horizontal roofs to
walk or not to walk on in the past 20 years, convince me, that the technical advanced human
being will use flat roofs exclusively in the future for instance for living (as playgrounds,
or to dry clothes) (p.55).
Ibid., p.15.
Hannes Meyer, Mein Hinauswurf aus dem Bauhaus. Offener Brief an Herrn
Oberbrgermeister Hesse, Dessau, in Hannes Meyer, Das Tagebuch (Berlin, 33, Bauhaus,
1930), vol.2, p.1307ff.
While on Mondays there were only music lessons and on Fridays only science, from Tuesday
to Thursday students worked in the studios for the entire 8-hour day like industrial workers.
In the Dessau Bauhaus syllabus of 1927 (leaflet Bauhaus Dessau, 1927, pp.45) gymnastics
and dance (voluntarily) belong with the general subjects and are taught in the first semester
for approximately two to four hours, in the second semester approx. 2 hours exercises
(unspecified) are advertised for more advanced students, in the 3rd semester part of the
studio work (are) exercises of gymnastics, dance, music, language, to prepare for the stage
science in the following semesters. In the first syllabus under Mies van der Rohe (Sept.
1930), Otto Bttner and Carla Grosch were still mentioned as teachers for sport and
gymnastics.
Situationsbericht von Hannes Meyer, Dessau, 1 September 1929 in Werner
Kleinerschkamp, hannes meyer 18891954. architekt urbanist lehrer (Berlin and
Frankfurt am Main: Ernst, 1989), p.169.
Artists and Pictures: Lutz T. Feininger Sport am Bauhaus (c. 1927), Herbert Bayer Fahrrad
(1928), Hajo Rose Hochspringer vorm Prellerhaus (showing Otto Bttner) (1930),
anonymous Sprung von der Terasse der Bauhaus-Kantine (1930).
Hannes Meyer, Bauhaus und Gesellschaft, bauhaus 1 (1929), 2.
Wick, bauhaus Pdagogik, p.14.
Klaus-Jrgen Winkler, Kunst und Wissenschaft. Hannes Meyers programmatische Schrift
Die Neue Welt und die Wettbewerbsentwrfe Petersschule und Vlkerbundpalast, in

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Kleinerschkamp, hannes meyer 18891954, pp.94108, quotation p.95.

38. See Susan Bandy, Suzanne Lenglen und das Knstlerische und Heroische im Sport, in Arnd
Krger and Bernd Wedemeyer (eds.), Aus Biographien Sportgeschichte lernen. Festschrift
zum 90. Geburtstag von Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Henze (Hoya: Nish, 2000), pp.16376.
39. Hannes Meyer, Die neue welt, Das Werk, 13 (1926), 7.
40. Carla Grosch was born in Weimar in 1904 and drowned in Tel Aviv in 1933.
41. Many of the traditional art academies did not want to allow women to study, in spite of the
regulations of the new Weimar constitution. So the Bauhaus was initially a forerunner, but in
1921 started to force women into the women classes, as the weaving mill was called. Anja
Baumhoff, Ich spalte den Menschen. Geschlechterkonzeptionen bei Johannes Itten, in
Bothe, Hahn and von Tavel (eds.), Das frhe Bauhaus und Johannes Itten, pp.919. For art
colleges and women: Walter Reimann, ber den Kampf der Frauen in Deutschland um
akademische Ausbildung auf dem Gebiet der bildenden Kunst, Studien zur Geschichte der
Hochschule fr bildende Knste Dresden (Dresden: Bauhaus, 1983), pp.1, 5ff. In general:
Barbara Duden and Hans Ebert, Die Anfnge des Frauenstudiums an der Technischen
Hochschule Berlin, in Reinhard Rhrup (ed.), Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft. Beitrge zur
Geschichte der Technischen Hochschule Berlin, 18791979 (Berlin: TV Berlin, 1979),
p.404.
42. Gret Palucca began teaching in 1924 and founded her school in 1925. She herself started to
do ballet at the age of 12, but realized that she could not express her own ideas. The 17-yearold Gret Palucca was deeply impressed by Mary Wigman: It was something incredibly new,
something so elementary that it immediately became clear to me: either I learn her way of
dancing now or I will never learn it. Here was the new dance, which matched my ideal here
was the human being and the role model I needed. Gerhard Schumann (ed.), Portrt einer
Knstlerin (Berlin: Bauhaus, 1972), p.174. Her intention was to form good craftswomen of
dance, because dance primarily involves technique and craftsmanship (Palucca ber ihre
Schule. Aus den Musikblttern des Anbruch 1926, in Tanz Palucca. Bilder,
Besprechungen und Auszge aus Kritiken von Solo- und Gruppen-Tanzauffhrungen 1926
and 27, p.27.) In the early years of the Third Reich, up to 1936 and the Olympic Games in
Berlin, she climbed the ladder of success. Under the guidance of Rudolf von Laban she was
the best-paid and leading educator of artistic dance and the most famous German dancer of
the time. See Peter Jarchow and Ralf Stabel, Palucca. Aus ihrem Leben ber ihre Kunst
(Berlin: Bauhaus, 1997), p.43.
43. See Jarchow and Stabel, Palucca. Aus ihrem Leben ber ihre Kunst, esp. pp.21 and 23.
44. See Die Neue Sammlung Munich (ed.), Oskar Schlemmer und die abstrakte Bhne. 20
November 1961 bis 8. Januar 1962. For Schlemmers lesson on the human being, which he
only taught for one year, because he left the Bauhaus in 1929, see Oskar Schlemmer,
bauhaus 23 (1928), 23. Andreas Bossmann, theaterreform lebensreform. ganzheitlichkeit
im knstlerischen schaffen oskar schlemmers, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen oskar
schlemmer. tanz theater bhne (Ostfildern-Ruit, 1994), pp.2230. Bauhaus Archiv and
Magdalena: Draste/Taschen bauhaus, 19191933, p.171.
45. Berliner Brsen-Courier 4.3.1929.
46. 7 July 1928: Maskentanz oder Tischgesellschaft, 1928 and 29: Drei gegen Eine; 1929
Glastanz and Metalltanz.
47. Dirk Scheper, Oskar Schlemmer Das Triadische Ballett und die Bauhausbhne (Berlin:
Bauhaus, 1988), p.175.
48. See Klein, FrauenKrperTanz. Eine Zivilisationsgeschichte des Tanzes, p.133.
49. Franz Marc quoted by Margarethe Streicher, Was kann das Turnen von den modernen
Systemen lernen? (Februar 1924), in Gaulhofer and Streicher, Natrliches Turnen.
Gesammelte Aufstze I, pp.10710, quotation p.107. For Hermann Nohl, the understanding
of art was dependant upon an as yet unachieved common acceptance of society. Hermann
Nohl, Die sthetische Wirklichkeit. Eine Einfhrung (Frankfurt am Main: Schullte-Bulmke,
1935), p.216.
50. Margarethe Streicher had studied the philosophy of Loheland. This private school for
agriculture, crafts and physical education (classical gymnastics), founded in 1912, had the
aim of developing a graduated physical consciousness in its students. Margarethe Streicher,

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51.
52.

53.

54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.

62.
63.
64.
65.

127

Loheland (August 1922), in Gaulhofer and Streicher Natrliches Turnen. Gesammelte

Aufstze I, pp.3034. Margarethe Streicher, Zur Erneuerung der Tanzkunst (Juli 1922), in
ibid., pp.2630.
Margarethe Streicher, Die Bedeutung der krperlichen bungen fr die Erziehung (Januar
1923)in ibid., pp.3440, quotation p.40.
Ibid. There was already some co-operation between P.E. teachers and artists initiated by
physical education teachers at Sachsen. They had distributed questionnaires to over a
hundred leading artists and painters to find out their opinion of physical beauty and Turnen
(physical education). According to the artists, an even development of the body is beneficial
to beauty (see H. Thiele, Krperschnheit und Turnen, Monatsschrift fr das Turnwesen
[1913], 1).
Margarethe Streicher, Zur Erneuerung der Tanzkunst (Juli 1922), in Gaulhofer and
Streicher, Natrliches Turnen. Gesammelte Aufstze I, pp.2630, quotation p.29. See also:
Rudolf Hecker and Christian Silberhorn, Krpererziehung vom knstlerischen Standpunkt,
in idem. (eds.), Deutsche Krpererziehung. Ziele und Methoden der Krperbildung (Munich,
1923), pp.1005.
Streicher emphasized that the modern systems were ahead of gymnastics in this theory.
(Margarethe Streicher, Was kann das Turnen von den modernen Systemen lernen? (Februar
1924), in Gaulhofer and Streicher, Natrliches Turnen. Gesammelte Aufstze I, pp.107110.
Margarethe Streicher, Die Bedeutung der krperlichen bungen fr die Erziehung (Januar
1923), in ibid., pp.3440.
Lzl Moholy-Nagy, in Palucca. Portrt einer Knstlerin (Berlin [Ost]: Henschelverlag,
1972), p.60.
Knstler um Palucca. Ausstellung zu Ehren des 85. Geburtstages. Katalog. Staatliche
Kunstsammlung Dresden, Kupferstich-Kabinett (Dresden: Bauhaus, 1987), p.7.
Nohl, Die sthetische Wirklichkeit. Eine Einfhrung, p.24.
See Mary Wigman, Vom Wesen des knstlerischen Tanzes, in Rudolf von Laban and Mary
Wigman (eds.), Die tnzerische Situation unserer Zeit (Dresden, 1936), pp.810.
Oskar Schlemmer, Tagebuchaufzeichnung: Mechanisch abstrakt. (Tagebuch 7 September
1931), in Die Neue Sammlung Munich (ed.), Oskar Schlemmer und die abstrakte Bhne,
pp.313, quotation p.31.
In 1924 Palucca married Friedrich Bienert, son of the art patron Ida Bienert. To her circle
of acquaintances belonged Oskar Kokoschka, Paul Klee, Emil Nolde, Otto Dix, Walter
Gropius and Mary Wigman, who probably introduced Palucca into this circle. (Jarchow and
Stabel, Palucca. Aus ihrem Leben ber ihre Kunst, p.33). Ise Bienert, sister of Friedrich,
studied at the Bauhaus.
See Wassily Kandinsky, Kunst und Erziehung (1947), p.250f.
See Jarchow and Stabel, Palucca. Aus ihrem Leben ber ihre Kunst, p.92.
Bauhaus 2 (1928), 4, p.30.
Klein, FrauenKrperTanz. Eine Zivilisationsgeschichte des Tanzes, p.181.