Journal of Black Mountain College Studies Volume 16

A Garden in the Landscape: Situating micro- and environmental Histories of the early Bauhaus

Mats Werchohlad

Published September 2025

As is well known, Black Mountain College became a key site of resonance and continuation for several former Bauhaus members. Among them were Josef and Anni Albers, who had both been active at the school’s original site in Weimar. The landscape at Black Mountain, with its lake, surrounding fields, woods, and the rising line of the Blue Ridge Mountains, offered a spatial configuration that, much like Weimar, encouraged reflection on the relationship between art, teaching and environment. Yet such local contexts and landscape configurations have often been underrepresented in Bauhaus historiographies. Similarly, the ecological dimension of Bauhaus discourse and design has long been overshadowed by the image of the Bauhaus as a technologically rationalist project. By contrast, this article outlines how territorial and ecological conditions in Weimar were closely and inseparably linked. To this aim, the Bauhaus Garden at the Model House Am Horn serves as a spatio-historical site of emplacement. Furthermore, this garden borders a largely overlooked historical landscape: the Park an der Ilm, an English landscape garden, co-shaped by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s design initiatives and the nature ideals of Weimar Classicism. Garden and landscape became resonant spaces for Bauhaus members, where the longing for a bygone Golden Age intersected with artistic and life-reforming impulses. Seen through a spatial lens, these concepts, debates and continuities come together in particularly striking ways and reveal the cultural-ecological entanglements of the early Bauhaus. Unfolding these topographies opens up new research perspectives that situate the ecological and material engagements of Bauhaus actors in Weimar and Dessau, as well as their resonances at sites such as Black Mountain College or Aspen, within a broader historical framework.
Missing Grounds in Bauhaus Research

„What had to be abandoned in order to modernize was the Local.“[1]

In summer 1923, a major exhibition in the small German city of Weimar offered a comprehensive glimpse into the architectural-, design-, and life-reforming visions of the early Bauhaus. As part of the exhibition, the newly constructed Model House Am Horn provided a tangible impression of the modern architecture and its technically advanced domestic interiors. Across the Ilmpark, in the skylit exhibition hall of the school’s main building, plans for a larger Bauhaus-settlement comprising the surrounding area were presented through architectural drawings, plans and models.

Figure 1 Translated Caption: Models for Serial Housing. Variability of a Single Basic Type Achieved through Alternating Combinations and Additions of Repeating Spatial Modules. Photograph from: Meyer, Adolf, Ein Versuchshaus des Bauhaus, eds. Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy, Bauhausbücher 3 (München: Albert Langen Verlag, 1925), 14. Digitized by the Library of Heidelberg University.

On this occasion, an ensemble model presented varied types of a prefabricated housing concept, placed across the abstract plateaus of a sloping terrain (see Fig. 1). Though this arrangement still hinted at the original settlement plans at the concrete site, the engagement with the specific landscape, the terrestrial conditions, and the local entanglements that had both shaped and ultimately undermined these plans were barely traceable in the abstract topography. The new building ambitions were now envisioned to be adaptable across diverse contexts. Initiated under political pressure and conceived as a moment of programmatic reorientation, the 1923 exhibition marked a formative shift of how the Bauhaus would be perceived in the years to come. It outlined a path that shaped its ambitions as well as it contributed to a trajectory of mythmaking linking the Bauhaus, emblematic of modernity itself, to its condition of nomadic placelessness[2] that continues to define its scholarly reception till today.

While the narratives of the school are habitually traced through its successive sites, Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, these places tend to function less as topographical sites of historical presence than as semantic topoi in a broader, often allegorical account: Weimar emerges as a symbol of cultural tradition, democratic aspiration, and provincial, conservative reaction; Dessau as the industrialized environment projecting a rationalized, modern life-reform; the short Berlin-phase as the site of political intensification and the beginning of a global Bauhaus diaspora. As these approaches toward the historic truth of the Bauhaus,[3] despite its myriad critical revisions, have continued to crystallize across decades of historiography, they exemplify what the sociologist Bruno Latour describes as a defining gesture of modernity: the purification of hybrid narratives, through which the human is separated from the non-human, the local from the global. In the process of collective historiographical abstraction, a collectively shared imagination, the individual, specific and sometimes contradictory experiences have been detached from their ecological and topographical contexts.[4]

That this collective form of history-making had taken on a life of its own was already noted by its founding director: Walter Gropius, reflecting on the “mistaken idea that the Bauhaus had established an apotheosis of rationalism,”[5] admitted that “I am a figure covered with labels, maybe to the point of obscurity.”[6] From the vantage point of his American exile, he therefore sought to redirect the public perception of his ambitions:

In our mechanized society we must passionately emphasize that we are still a world of people, and that the human being in their natural environment must stand at the center of all planning and design. So far, we have worshipped our new idols, the machines, so fervently that we have lost our spiritual sense of values in the process. Therefore, we should first reexamine the fundamental relationships between human and human, and between human and nature, rather than succumb to the pressure of special interests or the short-sighted enthusiasm of those who view mechanization as an end in itself.[7]

Although Gropius himself had shaped the rationalist image of the Bauhaus through its programmatic orientation and carefully staged publicity, his late criticism points to what in fact remains underrepresented in historical perception to this date: the connection of ecological practices, design, forms of living, experiences and the natural, historical, local environments.[8] A look at current research contributions reveals a diverse but still extremely fragmented landscape: A range of contributions analyze environmental ideas and concepts at the Bauhaus with reference to garden and exterior designs.[9] In many cases, however, the illustrations of architecture and design concepts remain strangely detached from the actual surroundings and topographical conditions.[10] This becomes apparent looking at how the Weimar phase of the Bauhaus is represented in historical accounts. Although the local cultural and institutional context, the role of Henry van de Velde, and the political backdrop, as well as the nature-oriented, esoteric, and life-reform ideals of the early phase of the school have been thoroughly examined, a significant landscape remains largely unexplored in both its topographical and cultural-historical dimensions: the Ilmpark.

A Landscape Garden in the Ilm Valley

The Park on the Ilm is a historically evolved cultural landscape of unique form and extent in the Ilm river valley of Weimar.

Figure 2 Georg Melchior Kraus, Der Ilmpark in Weimar mit Goethes Gartenhaus, n.d. Watercolor over traces of graphite (?), with white heightening in places (brush), on laid paper, mounted on cardboard; bordered on all sides with black brush lines. 389 × 602 mm. Freies Deutsches Hochstift / Frankfurter Goethe-Museum.

Since the late 18th century, it developed under the aegis of Duke Carl August and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe into a landscape garden that exemplarily reflects a relational understanding of nature and art. The park is characterized by a density of its spatial and symbolic references. Among the most notable monuments are Goethe’s Garden House (see Fig. 2 second house from right), the Roman House, and the neo-Gothic Tempelherrenhaus, amongst many more, all staged and placed through the meandering paths and sightlines that frame the landscape views. Typically, the park’s architecture and monuments integrate and relate stylistic elements in reference to various epochs: baroque garden structures, an Egyptian-style sphinx, neoclassical and neo-Gothic buildings, and a wide array of romantic and sentimental garden scenes. Without an overarching design plan, the complex site historically emerged from sentimental images of nature to a classical formal language,[11] a development shaped through the intellectual works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, cultural engagements of the Weimar court society and in reference to the garden-theoretical writings of Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld​.[12]

The nature philosopher Gernot Böhme has drawn on these references to illustrate how the English landscape garden can serve as a paradigm for reimagining the relationship between humans and nature. Moving beyond the traditional dichotomies of nature and art, or nature and technology, Böhme understands the landscape garden, in line with Hirschfeld, as “concrete poetics of nature,”[13] intended not to impose form but to evoke atmosphere and embodied, affective experience. Gardening, in this sense, becomes an act of co-creation with nature, not nature as passive material, but as natura naturans, a self-generating and expressive force that responds and resonates.[14]

Today, the park is part of the UNESCO World Heritage ensemble Classical Weimar and thus a space of lived experience, a botanically rich landscape in the heart of the city, a touristic monument, and a place for local communities. Covering an area of approximately 48 hectares, the park stretches from the northern edge of the historic city center to the district of Oberweimar, forming a green corridor between the palaces and garden landscapes of Tiefurt and Belvedere. It fundamentally shapes the cityscape of Weimar and represents a long tradition of aesthetic discourses, social exchange, and political negotiation within the city. However, even though the park accommodates a wide range of uses and communities that coexist and converge within it, its appearance and preservation-oriented conception remain primarily fixed on the image and era of Classical Weimar. The diverse historical topographies that have shaped the park over its long history, by contrast, are scarcely legible and can only be glimpsed. This aspect gradually emerged during academic research at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, revealing a gap in how the institution’s entanglements with its environment have been historically conceptualized, especially in relation to the early Bauhaus and its embeddedness in Weimar’s spatial and cultural landscape.

Figure 3 Ducal Riding Hall. Photograph: Mats 20 Werchohlad
The ducal riding hall, originally constructed as a Baroque building and refaced with a Neoclassical façade, served from 1923 until the Bauhaus’s departure from Weimar as a ground-floor classroom for the preliminary course. It was envisioned as the site for an interdisciplinary “laboratory of experimentation.”

The analysis of various spatial and building uses, residential locations, construction projects, and acts of appropriation during the historical Bauhaus period in Weimar revealed a striking concentration of activities in and around the Ilmpark.[15] Archival sources, lease agreements, letters and documents revealed a dense network of spatial use and relations between the Bauhaus and the park. In addition to the Tempelherrenhaus[16] and the ducal riding hall (see Fig. 3),[17] which were used as atelier and teaching space, the school tried to gain access to the Roman House for artistic studio uses[18] and to a wing of the palace as part of the major exhibition in 1923.[19] Alongside these official activities unfolding within the park, the private residences of key figures such as Johannes Itten, Lothar Schreyer, Paul Klee, and Gertrud Grunow were located in the immediate vicinity.[20]

Moreover, the Bauhaus-settlement plans, the garden, and Model House am Horn (see Fig. 4), although directly adjacent to the park, have hardly been considered in this context. The question of whether, and to what extent, these spatial relationships can be interpreted as the product of pragmatic, strategic, or idealistic motives and constellations therefore formed the core of my final thesis in Urban Studies. To convey an impression of the research pursued therein and beyond, the Tempelherrenhaus may serve as a paradigmatic point of departure as it embodies and interweaves two distinct chronotopoi:[21] the emergence of the landscape garden and the formative phase of the Bauhaus in Weimar.

Figure 4 Original Caption: Overall view seen from the southwest [As seen from the park] Photograph from: Meyer, Adolf, Ein Versuchshaus des Bauhaus, eds. Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy, Bauhausbücher 3 (München: Albert Langen Verlag, 1925), 64. Digitized by the Library of Heidelberg University.

A neo-Gothic Cathedral
After the regent, Anna Amalia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, had laid the groundwork for a liberal intellectual climate through her cultural policies,[22] the emergence of the Park an der Ilm can be traced back to two pivotal events: the devastating fire at Weimar’s city palace in 1774 and the arrival of the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe the following year. Goethe, whose rise to literary fame was decisively propelled by the success of his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, embodied a new sensibility: A Rousseau-inspired turn toward nature.[23]
In the wake of these developments, the court society around the Duke and Goethe moved their festivities, cross-class encounters, and cultural activities into the gardens and open landscape around the palace. In addition to the summer residences in Tiefurt, Belvedere, and Ettersburg, the immediate surroundings were increasingly used for such occasions; a small orangerie in the so-called Welscher Garten, for instance, provided provisional shelter for gatherings. Through festive use and architectural additions, the earliest sentimental scenes and vignettes of the landscape garden gradually took form around this site. In 1786/87, the building was converted into a summer salon (see Fig. 6). Between 1811 and 1823, the building then underwent a comprehensive redesign. Under the direction of court architect Johann Friedrich Rudolf Steiner, a single-story, neo-Gothic Hall was built, featuring a prominent tower on its eastern side.[24]

The erection of four monumental sandstone figures on the northern façade, depicting Knights Templar and sculpted by Johann Peter Kaufmann, infused the building with symbolic resonance rooted in Masonic visual culture that profoundly influenced the iconography of landscape gardens around 1800.[25] Over time, it therefore came to be known as the Tempelherrenhaus (see Fig. 7).

Figure 5 Theobald Reinhold von Oër, Der Weimarer Musenhof. Schiller in Tiefurt dem Hof vorlesend, 1860. Oil on canvas. 1320 × 1708 mm. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Photo: Andres Kilger.

Presented in a stylized and idealized manner, the painting depicts a gathering of the Weimar court in the landscaped gardens of Tiefurt, which form part of the broader Ilm valley landscape. Shown are the declaiming poet Friedrich Schiller, the regent and initiator of the Weimar “Musenhof,” Anna Amalia, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and others.

Figure 6 Georg Melchior Kraus, Oberer Eingang in den herzoglichen Park zu Weimar, ca. 1780–1784. Watercolor over graphite on laid paper, bordered on all sides with black brush lines. 338 × 508 mm. Städel Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings.
The garden salon in the park before its transformation to the so-called “Tempelherrenhaus.” Presented in a stylized and idealized manner, the painting depicts a gathering of the Weimar court in the landscaped gardens of Tiefurt, which form part of the broader Ilm valley landscape. Shown are the declaiming poet Friedrich Schiller, the regent and initiator of the Weimar “Musenhof,” Anna Amalia, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and others.

Figure 7 Tempelherrenhaus. Postcard, early 20th century. Zeno.org / Ansichtskartenarchiv. Available at: zeno.org. Historical postcard view showing the building before its destruction during World War II.

Figure 8 Johannes Itten in religious attire, pictured in front of his color star. Photograph, c. 1920. Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Hs NL 11: Ba 5.1. Link. Public Domain Mark.

After the Golden Age, the building gradually deteriorated, however remaining a place of cultural significance that hosted concerts by Franz Liszt, who lived just a few meters away, and serving as a summer retreat for composer Ferruccio Busoni. In 1919, it was handed over to the Bauhaus[26] and was soon used by the newly appointed Swiss painter Johannes Itten as a studio from 1920. As a central protagonist of the early Bauhaus, Johannes Itten (see Fig. 8), who led the renowned preliminary course, stands for the mystical and esoteric currents within the school. His pedagogical vision drew not only on esoteric and reformist currents[27] but also on Goethean models of nature and perception, particularly his Theory of Colours.[28] As the historian Ulrich Linse has compellingly outlined,[29] Itten’s embrace of Mazdaznan faith, a syncretic system of spiritual hygiene and dietary discipline rooted in American neo-Zoroastrianism, shaped both his pedagogy and daily routine, culminating in a rigorously codified lifestyle of breath control, nutritional regimens, and ritualized practices of inner purification.[30] By expressing his faith (and dogmatism)[31] through monastic dress and a shaved head, Itten’s spiritual authority over a close circle of followers became apparent to a broader public as well. This spiritual and ideological demarcation, imbued with the mystique of higher truth and a sense of conspiratorial secrecy, resonated with Gropius’s vision in the early phase of the school. In the expressive pathos of the founding moment, he called upon his students to form “small, secret, self-contained circles, lodges, and guilds” envisioning “conspiracies that guard a mystery, a core of belief, and seek to shape it artistically […] until, out of these individual groups, a general, overarching, spiritual-religious idea once again condenses, one that must ultimately find its crystalline expression in a great total work of art [Gesamtkunstwerk].”[32] For such spiritually charged endeavors toward the utopian Gesamtkunstwerk, the medieval cathedral served as a central reference. It was not only rendered emblematic in the frontispiece of the Bauhaus Manifesto, but also evoked in the very name “Bauhaus” itself, which refers to the medieval lodge [Dombauhütte] where various crafts and trades came together. These romanticized ideal of the medieval Bauhütte, and the historical invocation of the Gothic cathedral, as well as associations to Freemasonry have been taken up in illuminating studies of early Bauhaus discourse. Annemarie Jaeggi, director of the Bauhaus-Archive, situates the Bauhütten-romanticism within architectural debates of the time, tracing its influence from Gropius’s programmatic writings to early designs such as the Haus Sommerfeld and Bauhaus scholar Walter Determann’s plans for a projected Bauhaus settlement. Art historian Ellen Schwinzer, in turn, has drawn attention to the symbolic resonance of the Tempelherrenhaus, though she suggests that Itten’s choice of this location was likely shaped by practical rather than ideologic motivations. Schwinzer’s assessment can at least be called into question, considering that the painter and master of the mural and stage workshop Oskar Schlemmer, a close associate of Itten, highlighted the significance of this choice of location, recalling that Itten had made the use of the ”Templerordenshaus” in direct proximity to Goethe’s Garden House a firm condition for accepting his appointment in Weimar.[33]

Figure 9 Georg Melchior Kraus, Grotte der Sphinx im Park zu Weimar, 1801. Gouache and watercolor over graphite on paper, bordered on all sides with dark grey pen lines; mounted on paper. 510 × 409 mm. Städel Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings.
Two of the Leutra springs were artistically designed toward the end of the 18th century. The Sphinx Grotto was erected in 1784 by order of Duke Carl August, with sculptor Martin Gottlieb Klauer executing the work based on designs by Georg Melchior Kraus. With its Egyptian bust and a now-lost artificial waterfall, the site evoked a mood of melancholic gloom and mystical atmosphere.

The impact of Itten’s choice of the Tempelherrenhaus as a site for his artistic and spiritual practice becomes particularly comprehensible when the atmospheres of the surrounding park are taken into account. Shaped by Goethean reverence and Romantic natural symbolism, the park offered a field of tension and activity that aligned with Itten’s spirituality and allowed him to further amplify his mystical aura.[34] Against this background, it appears entirely consistent that he and his family settled into the apartment of a gracious villa on the edge of the park. At the foot of the villa, three fault-line springs gave rise to the Leutra (see Fig. 9), a quiet, meandering stream that flows into the Ilm at the Sternbrücke, directly opposite the ducal palace. After spending his first night at this place, he wrote to his friend Anna Höllering in Vienna:

“Today the first frost lay on tree and field as I walked through Goethe Park.”[35]

From then on, his daily commute would lead him through the park to his atelier or to teach in the Bauhaus school building, just a few hundred meters beyond, likewise bordering the park. Considering his earlier experiences as a student in Stuttgart, South-Germany, this environment must have felt like a fateful convergence: In retrospect, he noted to have left his first lodging in the inner city of Stuttgart because “the walls and the noise of the evening city weighed heavily on me.” He exchanged it for a small garden cottage on a hillside above town, hidden behind “a small, old, pseudo-Gothic house with four little towers.” Behind his sparse shelter, lacking electricity and running water, a low wall opened onto “a large, pompous, cold park, in which stood a new, castle-like villa with yellow-and-white walls.”[36] In its secluded, nature-oriented setting and close proximity to the Bauhaus, the Tempelherrenhaus and the park therefore spatially condensed and mirrored Itten’s ambitions that Oskar Schlemmer reflected as following:

Itten wants to turn the Bauhaus into a monastery of saints or at least monks.  […] What is visible of it today is that Itten, Muche (a convert), and a number of loyal students have withdrawn from the others to pursue a common path, one that, through its exclusivity, aims both to attract and to repel.[37]

The auratic connection between place and Itten’s spirituality is vividly evoked in a drawing (see Fig. 10) by Itten’s student Rudolf Baschant, who would subsequently design both the garden gate and the surrounding grounds of the Model House Am Horn.[38] In an etching produced during the early Weimar period of Itten’s teaching, the architectural volume and formal language of the Tempelherrenhaus merge with the expressionist intensity of Feininger’s woodcut for the Bauhaus Manifesto (see Fig. 11) and with the spiritual motif of a transcendental figure of light. Indeed, just as behind the Tempelherrenhaus, fir trees rise behind the cathedral-like building. Although no formal teaching sessions are documented to have taken place in the Tempelherrenhaus, numerous indications suggest that the site became a spiritual refuge for Itten’s close circle.

Figure 10 Rudolf Baschant, Ekstase, 1921. Etching. 84 × 66 mm. Private collection.
Reproduction from: Berthold Ecker, Rudolf Baschant: 1897–1955 (Linz: Land Oberösterreich, Amt der OÖ. Landesregierung, Institut für Kulturförderung, 1997), 67.

Figure 11 Lyonel Feininger; text by Walter Gropius, Programm des Staatlichen Bauhaus, 1919. Woodcut with letterpress printed in black ink on green wove paper. 302 × 186 mm. Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, Gift of Julia Feininger. © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo: © President and Fellows of Harvard College. https://hvrd.art/o/223124

The Garden Am Horn

His orientation toward spiritual practice gained even broader traction at the Bauhaus when Itten implemented a Mazdaznan-inspired dietary regime in the student-run canteen. Crucial to this expansion of influence was the strategic acquisition of a new spatial resource: a leased property garden plot located at the end of the street Am Horn. Next to the park, this site was situated in a neighbourhood in which, alongside Paul Klee and Gertrud Grunow, predominantly older and affluent residents lived. In fact, the leasing was initially driven by pragmatic as well as ambitious considerations: After the end of the First World War, Weimar had become both the temporary seat of the constitutional National Assembly and from 1920, the capital of the new state of Thuringia. As a result, the often penniless students faced, as Gropius stated, a “catastrophic“[39]  housing shortage. The appropriation of land was thus conceived and justified as the starting point for a large-scale settlement plan intended for members of the Bauhaus community, to which Gropius issued a call for architectural contributions.[40] Given the urgency, plans were considered to even erect temporary wooden barracks for accommodation.[41] These plans, however, met with fierce resistance from the local population. Regarding the Bauhaus students’ search for housing, Gropius had already remarked upon the “well-known attitude of certain civic circles, stirred up by particular individuals, which has become painfully noticeable in the form of an outright boycott against Bauhaus students.”[42] The settlement plans, in particular, were openly attacked.[43] In a public letter to the municipal council and its leadership, numerous local residents spoke out referring to the circulating “rumors” against the construction of a “settlement of wooden houses,” complaining in particular that the “well-publicized conduct and notorious lifestyle” of the “still untrained students”[44] assigned to the building tasks would threaten the idyllic character of the adjacent birch grove. As Gropius anticipated the rising hostilities, and since additionally “nine birch trees had been partly sawn down, partly uprooted”[45] by unknown individuals on the site, he saw himself compelled to visibly legitimize the use of the grounds at any cost, both in the eyes of the local population and the Ministry. He thus directed the initiative toward another central rationale the Bauhaus had initially articulated in favor of leasing the site: The intention to cultivate the land aimed to counteract the scarcity of food-supply.[46] This issue had grown increasingly urgent amid postwar food rationing and soaring inflation. For Gropius, this occasion provided a favorable impetus to gradually develop the garden and integrate it into the settlement plans. As he argued it was “necessary to fence in the grounds and to commission a gardener with the development of the site”,[47] to order seeds, purchase the necessary tools, build a small garden shed and access a water supply.[48]

Itten’s influence shaped these efforts in ways that were both purposeful and ambivalent to Gropius’ ambitions. By supporting the gardeners’ work, a group of Bauhaus students demonstrated active engagement and managed to publicize the garden project considerably within the school. However, this student-group, led by Itten’s close confidant Georg Muche, consisted of spiritual Mazdaznan adherents, through whom Itten was ultimately able to extend his spiritual influence on the school’s meal plan.[49] For Itten’s inner circle, gardening became a contemplative practice. Alongside rituals such as immersing in the Park’s spring water and long promenades as part of Easter ceremonies, the student Paul Citroen recalls fasting practices during the garden work:

As we had a garden on a hill near Weimar with several hundred raspberry bushes, fruit trees, as well as other crops, there was no better place to spend our fast than there, pulling weeds, one of our favorite activities, since we were determined to eradicate weeds, the counter-creation, from the face of the Earth, and to engage in other useful labor. No one disturbed or overheard us there during our pious chants.[50]

Figure 12 Rudolf Baschant, Untitled, n.d. Ink, pen, and watercolor. 219 × 162 mm. Private collection. Reproduction from: Berthold Ecker, Rudolf Baschant: 1897–1955 (Linz: Land Oberösterreich, Amt der OÖ. Landesregierung, Institut für Kulturförderung, 1997), 57.

In this context, Rudolf Baschant’s untitled etching (See Fig. 12) can be interpreted as a visual reflection of the ascetic rituals described by Citroen. The emaciated figure with rake, set amid barren vegetation, evokes both physical exhaustion and spiritual elevation. Read within the local setting of the garden plots near the Horn, the image suggests a mode of Bauhaus spirituality shaped by labor, withdrawal, and ritualized devotion. Such expressions of inner conviction likely heightened the sense of estrangement between the Bauhaus and its conservative environment. In fact, it was becoming increasingly clear that the settlement plans, along with the very existence of the Bauhaus, were coming under growing scrutiny. In response to this precarious political and financial situation, the Bauhaus organized a major exhibition in 1923. The event was intended to present the school’s ideas and products, accompanied by a rich cultural program with numerous events and international guests.[51] For this occasion, a model house was built on the site. The reflections, preparatory efforts, and conflicts surrounding the plot stand symptomatically for the school’s shifting orientation toward the slogan “Art and Technology – A New Unity,” which would come to define the Dessau period and ultimately marked the departure of Johannes Itten.[52]
Grounds of Transition

Examining how the early Bauhaus engaged with its immediate environment offers a revealing perspective that has so far received little attention. The ways in which these site-specific negotiations and concerns shaped both its programmatic direction and artistic practice will be exemplarily outlined through two archival anecdotes:

First, a brochure for the so-called “Normal and Self-Build System” for timber houses (see Fig. 13), archived in a folder of the “Preparation and Execution of Works on the Settlement Site Am Horn,” forms a connective piece in the mosaic of this transitional process. The brochure advertised technical guidelines for the construction of timber houses, following a standardized self-build system with typified house designs. In a letter addressed to the Staatliche Gewerbeschule Weimar, but apparently forwarded to the Bauhaus or specifically Gropius, the Finnish architect Olof Boecker emphasizes “that, through the purchase of a license for one of the types 1–5, all documents such as construction drawings, building specifications, timber quantity lists, and other material extracts, instructions, etc., are available for a total price of MK. 750. I assume that these documents will be of great value for teaching purposes.” [53]

Figure 13 Floor plans, structure, and assembly of the Normalbausystem. Archived in: Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, “Aus dem Prospekt für das Normal- und Selbstbausystem Olof Boecker,” Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Nr. 201, 62.

Awarded a gold medal at an exhibition dedicated to economical building practices, the brochure extols the advantages of standardized building components, simple execution, and constructive individualization, as well as the possibility of combining timber and loam construction, “potentially also using other substitute materials, such as slag blocks, pumice stone, etc.”[54] The concept and illustrations in the brochure in fact reveal numerous aspects and approaches that indicate a direction aligned with Gropius’s emerging (and later manifested) interest in rationalized construction processes and standardized building typologies. In terms of material, construction technique, and aesthetic appearance, they nonetheless most closely resemble the early designs of Walter Determann, who also embedded the timber houses more directly into the sloped landscape of the Ilm valley. As with the Haus Sommerfeld, these designs still reflect the expressionist and, as Jaeggi emphasizes, romantic ideals and practices rooted in the Bauhütten tradition. The renowned Klee scholar Osamu Okuda interpreted the transition from this romantic Bauhütte imaginary to a rationalist architectural approach through Klee’s painting Villas (sinking) and Barracks (rising) (1923) [Villen (versinkende) und Baracken (aufsteigende)], linking it to an antagonistic constellation of Klee’s house and the settlement designs.[55] Though Okuda acknowledges the general post-war practice of erecting barracks to address housing shortages, his compelling analysis might be further enriched by specifying that Gropius had in fact proposed such a measure precisely for the site Am Horn.

An additional archival file closely linked to this brochure reveals how Gropius then gradually shifted his focus toward more synthetic materials and processes, such as slag, a metallurgical by-product that offered a cheap, industrially produced material well suited to mechanical and standardized construction methods.[56] As a result, the text “Wohnhaus Industrie”,[57] published by Gropius in one of the Bauhaus books on the Model House Am Horn, marks the culmination of this transition. While it incorporates central features of the “Normal and Self-Build System”, it also reveals two significant differences: Boecker emphasizes that his system, based on timber construction, can be implemented by craftsmen and even laypersons. Rather than relying on prefabricated serial components, it draws on local (craft, forest, and wood) resources. Gropius, on the other hand, emphasizes standardized prefabrication as a means of enabling his concepts to be applied on a much larger scale: “The aim, by contrast, would be the industrial-scale production of residential buildings in large factories, no longer constructed on-site but manufactured in specialized plants as prefabricated, assembly-ready components.”[58] From Gropius’ initial ambitions of provisional wooden barracks to his emerging vision of industrialized prefabricated houses, the timber construction system offers a glimpse into the shifting conceptual and programmatic (re)orientation.

One further exemplary connection to this site concerns the local-historical dimension within the artistic engagements at the Bauhaus: Paul Klee’s engagement with mystical and esoteric dimensions is as well explored by Okuda, who traces Klee’s philosophical and particularly anthroposophical interests in an essay published in a comprehensive volume on esotericism at the Bauhaus. Okuda relates Klee’s philosophical debates to numerous of his works, among them Landscape with the Dowser (1923) [Landschaft mit dem Rutengänger] (see Fig. 14).[59] In the context of these artistic investigations, Okuda sheds light on Klee’s ambivalent stance toward theosophy and related currents. Here too, certain local historical entanglements remain underarticulated, most notably the documented presence of a dowser at the Haus Am Horn site, just steps away from Klee’s residence. The Bauhaus had commissioned dowsing surveys (carried out by Otto Rödiger, an engineer specializing in water supply from Jena) to detect underground water veins for the establishment of a well. Despite several drilling attempts (three well shafts reaching depths of twenty-four, seven, and eleven meters)[60] Gropius had to repeatedly concede that Rödiger’s indications and predictions “contradicted the facts.”[61] A nearly humorous exchange of letters offers insight into both the dowser’s exorbitant fee and the considerable logistical efforts undertaken by the Bauhaus.[62] In this correspondence, the early cultivation of the site, rooted in supernatural and unscientific practices,[63] becomes exemplary. The property was eventually connected to the municipal water supply network.[64] Nevertheless, the delay would drive construction costs to unforeseen heights due to the now rapidly accelerating inflation.[65] Beyond this anecdote, Klee’s works from the Weimar period contain numerous references to the local and symbolic dimensions of the Ilmpark, suggesting avenues for future scholarly inquiry. During this time, he often explored the park with great intensity and attention.[66]

Figure 14 Paul Klee, Landschaft mit dem Rutengänger, 1923. Oil on chalk-primed paper, bordered with watercolor and ink; lower margin strip with watercolor and ink on cardboard. 251 × 330 mm. Kunst Museum Winterthur, KV 1030. Photocredit: Hans Humm, Zürich

These fragmentary insights suggest that the situated experiences, conflicts, and practices surrounding the model house still offer considerable potential for deeper investigation. The construction of the Model House Am Horn ultimately came to symbolize Gropius’s assertion of authority in his conflict with Itten. While it stands exemplarily for his pursuit of adaptable, universally applicable construction methods, the publication and staging of the house deliberately pushed the specific site and the adjacent park into the background. Hidden references to the spatial dimension of the conflict between Gropius and Itten appear in the Masters’ Council records, where Gropius, at the height of their dispute, warned against falling back into a Rousseauesque nature-romanticism or retreating to what he called a “romantic island” [67], a critique that becomes emblematic of the park’s role as a spatial refuge for the mystical-esoteric faction around Itten. The fact that it was Georg Muche, one of Itten’s close associates, who provided the design can, in this light, be read as a strategic move by Gropius to regain access to the garden through a figure from Itten’s inner circle.

Figure 15 Farkas Molnár, Liebespaar vorHaus am Horn, 1923. Drypoint etching.Plate: 248 × 197 mm; sheet: 416 × 324 mm.Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin.
Reproduction from: Jeannine Fiedler, PeterFeierabend, and Norbert Schmitz, eds., Bauhaus (Cologne: Könemann, 1999), 114.
Georg and El Muche, for whom the housewas briefly conceived, were regarded as anexemplary couple within the Bauhauscommunity. Here they appear as Adam and Eve like lovers who find their paradise not ina Garden of Eden, but through designing thenew domestic world of the model house.

Figure 16 Translated caption: “Timber pivot windows in the residential rooms.” Photograph from: Meyer, Adolf, Ein Versuchshaus des

Bauhaus, eds. Walter Gropius and László Moholy- Nagy, Bauhausbücher 3 (München: Albert Langen

Verlag, 1925), 38. Digitized by the Library of Heidelberg University. In the issue of the Bauhaus-bookseries, the model home’s only significant view toward the landscape is framed by a window drawing the attention not to the prospect, but to the technical detailing of the window construction.

This spatially and contextually grounded perspective may likewise encompass the largely overlooked garden design by Rudolf Baschant. In his concept, the tensions inscribed in the site are not erased but translated into a spatial composition that balances detachment and continuity (compare Fig. 4). The abstract, reduced layout elevates the house above its surroundings, staging Gropius’s detached vision of universally applicable form. On the other hand, the acropolis-like, Palladian framing evokes landscape garden traditions, where architecture and terrain are linked through minimal intervention. Within this broader spatial choreography, the Model House Am Horn emerges as a focal point, visually and symbolically connected to nearby structures such as the Tempelherrenhaus, the Garden House, and the Roman House. Behind the building, a modest self-sufficiency garden was also integrated, quietly extending the site’s tradition of lived cultivation and grounding the modern prototype in a local, agricultural logic.

Figure 17 Figure 1 Translated caption: “Application of Torfoleum panels to the roof surfaces.” Photograph from: Meyer, Adolf, Ein Versuchshaus des Bauhaus, eds. Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy, Bauhausbücher 3 (München: Albert Langen Verlag, 1925), 34. Digitized by the Library of Heidelberg University.
Here again, the park appears only in fragments—briefly visible in the background of construction shots and technical illustrations.

Agonistic Landscapes

Approaching the Bauhaus through lenses of environmental history or cultural ecology resituates its narrative and formative dynamics within the enduring entanglements of landscape, matter, and locality. These entanglements never fully transcended the physical grounds and environments we continue to inhabit today. Architectural discourse did not develop independently of place, but rather emerged through its embeddedness in specific local conditions. In this sense, the Park an der Ilm constitutes a distinctive discursive landscape where concepts of nature and naturalness have been continually shaped, debated, and reflected upon.

Architectural debates concerning Greek classicism and Gothic revivalism, which resonated at the Bauhaus,[68] become tangible in the park. For the Bauhäusler at the time, these seemingly opposing traditions were not perceived as conflicting but experienced in atmospheric coexistence and spatial resonance. As Müller-Wolff notes, “the Gothic and Classicist monuments of the Weimar Park stand for a present-day coexistence of various stylistic forms, which are to be understood as ‘configurations of a singular aesthetic modernity.’”[69] However, despite its eclectic repertoire of forms and styles, the aesthetic of the landscape garden forms a coherent and self-contained system. Its fragile atmospheric qualities respond sensitively to stylistic ruptures and influences from later periods. “Evidently, its aesthetic is so perfect that it does not allow for any violation of its laws.”[70] As a site of cultural memory, the spaces associated with Goethe form a particularly sensitive terrain within Weimar. The lifestyle publicly exhibited in the park by early Bauhaus members was subject to sharp criticism. This criticism came not only from the Weimar public but also from many administrative and governmental officials. Archival sources relating to settlement plans, the Tempelherrenhaus, and the Reithaus reveal in detail how conservative and reactionary forces in both public discourse and political institutions worked to diminish, and eventually cut off, the Bauhaus’s spatial and financial foundations.

Through living with the land, spatial uses of the parks ressources, architectural conversions, and new construction at the park’s edge, the Bauhaus inscribed itself into the landscape and into the cultural reception of this site in multiple ways. The landscape garden provided the historical, material, and spatial configuration of a “model for life”[71] that Bauhaus members referenced, negotiated, reformed, or rejected. That this spatial dimension, while continuously operative, remains largely unspoken becomes especially apparent in a final example, in which architectural historian Wolfgang Pehnt contrasts Goethe’s Garden House with the Model House Am Horn. [72] Through this antagonistic juxtaposition, he vividly illustrates how the architectural discourse of the early twentieth century manifested in spatial form and ideological opposition, notably in the fiercely debated contrast between pitched and flat roofs. In a recollection by Paul Klopfer, then director of the Building Trades School in Weimar and closely connected to the Bauhaus and its debates, the entanglement of architectural perception and immediate physical environment becomes particularly clear:

My way home led me past Goethe’s little garden house. How intimately it rose from the meadow in unison with the tall trees and the slope behind it. On a spring night, the nightingale would sing there, and its song, along with the green moonlight on the wall, the old shingled roof, and the glittering of the small windowpanes, formed a touching human symphony —All that primeval, secretive, homely, and cultivated spirit was missing from the Gropius house— in the coolness of its inner and outer appearance it had nothing to do with nightingales.[73]

The sense of naturalness evoked by the park’s immediate spatial and historical setting becomes a crucial argument in Klopfer’s vivid recapitulation, an aspect that Pehnt, however, leaves as well entirely unaddressed. While this subjective perception remains comprehensible, the artistic practices at the Bauhaus, as has been demonstrated, need not be understood merely as a rejection of landscape, but rather as a nuanced and ambivalent engagement with it. The direct reference to landscape garden design, however, does not end in Weimar. That the landscape garden in Wörlitz near Dessau served as a model for the Ilmpark[74] —and that the Masters’ Houses in Dessau were situated opposite the Georgengarten, another English-style landscape garden — has thus far gone entirely unremarked.

Figure 18 The path from Goethe’s Garden House to the Model House am Horn. Photograph: Mats
Werchohlad.
Among those who used it almost daily were Paul Klee and his son Felix, who lived in the house with the gable just visible between the trees.

Seen from this broader vantage point, the transatlantic activities and landscape-oriented practices of the twentieth century unfold from a shared landscape of experience. This lens could draw attention to the garden designs of Gropius and Breuer in Lincoln, to Herbert Bayer’s environmental planning in Aspen, to the evolving spatial responses at Black Mountain College, and to theoretical reflections by Ludwig Hilberseimer and Sigfried Giedion on the relationship between architecture, space and landscape. Together, these cases might open up new ways of understanding how landscape was inhabited, actively constructed, framed and theorized within modernist design cultures. Gernot Böhme’s call for a new ecological aesthetics offers a productive lens through which these processes could be re-examined. His philosophic account on the design principals of historical landscape gardens foregrounds the various characteristics, compositional strategies and cultural assumptions embedded in them. Against this backdrop, the landscape imaginaries of transatlantic modernism might be explored in terms of how they engage with ideas of a living and generative nature, how they construct spatial atmospheres and psychological effects, how they overcome dichotomic paradigms and how they respond to aesthetic principles drawn from both the English landscape garden and Goethean landscape thinking. What emerges beyond these horizons is a research landscape whose contours we are only just beginning to trace.
[1] Latour, Bruno. Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, UK / Medford, MA: Polity, 2018), 26.

[2] Neef, Sonja, ed. An Bord der Bauhaus: zur Heimatlosigkeit der Moderne (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2009)

See also: Schade, Sigrid, “Widersprüche – Mythen der abstrakten Moderne zwischen der »Immaterialität« der Kunst und der »Materialität« des Kunstwerks.” In: Mythos Bauhaus: Zwischen Selbsterfindung und Enthistorisierung, eds. Anja Baumhoff and Magdalena Droste (Berlin: Reimer, 2009), 147–68

[3] A reflection on ways of approaching the “reality” of the Bauhaus from perspectives of science and technology studies is given in: Werchohlad, Mats, “The Fabrication of Reality. A Relativistic Account on the Question of What the Bauhaus ‘truly’ Was.” In: COTAA – Collection of Texts about Architecture no. 1 (2024), 39–54.

[4] see Latour, Bruno, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994)

[5] Gropius, Walter, Architektur: Wege Zu Einer Optischen Kultur (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Bücherei, 1956), 16. (translated)

[6] Gropius, Walter, Scope of Total Architecture (Toronto: Collier Books, 1970), 11.

[7] Gropius, Walter, Apollo in der Demokratie (Mainz: Kupferberg, 1967), 13. (translated)

[8] Thus, landscape architect Lars Hopstock, in an overview on the current state of research in occasion of the Bauhaus centenary in 2019, remarks that the relationship between architecture and garden design, between interior and exterior spaces, has received too little scholarly attention. He points out that while there are indications of a distinct formal language in these spatial compositions, their contextual, ecological, and cultural dimensions remain largely underexplored. See: Hopstock, Lars, “Gedanken zum Stand der Forschung: 100 Jahre Bauhaus … und Gartenkunst?” Stadt+Grün, no. 2 (2019): 51–59.

[9] An (incomplete) overview of this topic would include the following research contributions:

An elaboration on Walter Gropius’ environmental thinking using the example of an urban design project for the city of Halle in: Fuhrmann, Christine, Eine Stadtkrone für Halle Saale – Walter Gropius im Wettbewerb. (Halle (Saale): Stiftung Moritzburg, Kunstmuseum des Landes Sachsen-Anhalt, 2011).

A landscape-archaeological study of Bauhaus exterior spaces in Dessau by: Fischer-Leonhardt, Dorothea, Die Gärten des Bauhauses: Gestaltungskonzepte der Moderne (Berlin: Jovis, 2005).

In addition to his reflections on spatial and temporal concepts in the architecture of Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe, art historian Ulrich Müller has also provided a survey of garden design practices at the Bauhaus: Müller, Ulrich, “Die Gartenkunst am Bauhaus,” in: Gartenarchitektur und Moderne in Deutschland im frühen 20. Jahrhundert – Drei Beiträge (Vortragsmanuskript), ed. Zentrum für Gartenkunst und Landschaftsarchitektur, Universität Hannover (2006), 29–46.

On the ecological thinking of the Bauhaus in exile, with a particular focus on London, see: Anker, Peder, From Bauhaus to Ecohouse: A History of Ecological Design (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010); and idem, “The Bauhaus of Nature,” in Modernism/Modernity 12, no. 2 (2005): 229–251.

Further explorations of nature-related themes in the work of Bauhaus-Masters such as Paul Klee and Johannes Itten—especially in relation to their geographical and experiential contexts—are compiled in: Güse, Ernst-Gerhard et al., Paul Klee: Wachstum regt sich. Klees Zwiesprache mit der Natur (München: Prestel, 1990); Klee, Paul, Unendliche Naturgeschichte (Basel: Schwabe, 1970); and Okuda, Osamu, “Paul Klee und die Pflanzenwelt: Botanik, Garten, Landschaft. Eine Chronologie,” in: In Paul Klees Zaubergarten, ed. Zentrum Paul Klee (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2008)

In 2025, the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau dedicates a major exhibition titled Bauhaus Ecologies to the ecological dimensions of Bauhaus practice, using selected objects from its collection as a starting point for inquiry: Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, “Bauhaus Ecologies,” Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, accessed April 03, 2025, https://bauhaus-dessau.de/en/exhibitions/bauhaus-ecologies/

[10] Exemplary exceptions in which the experiences and influences of the specific landscape are explicitly accounted include the spatial-philosophical reading of Mies van der Rohe’s concept of landscape, grounded in the Alpine Lake region of Northern Italy, which was provided by: Kirchengast, Albert, Das unvollständige Haus: Mies van der Rohe und die Landschaft (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2019)

Equally exemplary is an exhibition that focuses on the influences and experiences of Johannes Itten’s origins in the Bernese Oberland: Hirsch, Helen and Wagner, Christoph, Johannes Itten und Thun: Natur im Mittelpunkt (München: Hirmer, 2020)

[11] Müller, Ulrich, “»Ziehet das Genie des Orts zu Rathe; […] es mahlet, indem ihr pflanzet, und zeichnet Entwürfe, indem ihr anleget.«” In: Das Römische Haus in Weimar, ed. Andreas Beyer (München: Hanser, 2001), 96-109.

[12] A comprehensive history of the Ilmpark’s development was presented by the art historian Susanne Müller-Wolff. Müller-Wolff, Susanne. Ein Landschaftsgarten im Ilmtal: Die Geschichte des herzoglichen Parks in Weimar (Köln: Böhlau, 2007)

Until then, the writings of historian Wolfgang Huschke had served as a central historic foundation: Huschke, Wolfgang, Die Geschichte des Parkes von Weimar (Weimar: Böhlau, 1951) and: Huschke, Wolfgang, and Wolfgang Vulpius, Park um Weimar: ein Buch von Dichtung und Gartenkunst (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1955)

[13] Böhme, Gernot, “Die Bedeutung des englischen Landschaftsgartens und seine Theorie für die Entwicklung einer ökologischen Naturästhetik.” In: Böhme, Gernot, Für eine ökologische Naturästhetik, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989), 79–95, 88.

[14] See also: Haberl, Hildegard, “Von Gärten und Museen: Wissens- und Erinnerungsräume im enzyklopädischen Roman des 19. Jahrhunderts bei Goethe und Flaubert.” In: Literarische Räume: Architekturen – Ordnungen – Medien, eds. Martin Huber, Christine Lubkoll, Steffen Martus, and Yvonne Wübben (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2012), 93–109

[15] Documented in: Werchohlad, Mats, “Die Natur des Bauhaus.” In: Die Bauhaus-Universität Weimar und die politische Geschichte hinter ihrem Städtebau: Forschungsprojekt, Professur Raumplanung und Raumforschung, Institut für Europäische Urbanistik, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Wintersemester 2017/2018, ed. Max Welch Guerra (Weimar, 2018), 22-39.

[16] Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, “Nutzung des Tempelherrenhauses im Park,” Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Nr. 84

[17] Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, “Nutzung des Erdgeschosses des Reithauses an der Ilm für Unterrichtszwecke und Entziehung dieser Räume,” Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Nr. 85

[18] Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, “Anfrage an das An das Hofmarschallamt zur Überlassung des römischen Hauses vom 10. Dez 1919,” Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Nr. 85, 31.

[19] Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, “Nutzung des Erdgeschosses des Reithauses an der Ilm für Unterrichtszwecke und Entziehung dieser Räume,” Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Nr. 85

Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, “Angedachte bzw. realisierte Bereitstellung von Räumen für die Bauhausausstellung im Sommer 1923 im Landesmuseum Weimar, im Kunstschulgebäude, in Schloss Belvedere sowie im Residenzschloss und in der Reithalle im Marstall in Weimar,” Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Nr. 36

[20] It was through Itten’s mediation that the Klee took up residence Am Horn 53 see Klee, Paul, “Karte an Lily Klee, München [Weimar], 11.1.21.” In: Paul Klee – Briefe an die Familie 1893–1940, ed. Felix Klee (Köln: DuMont, 1979), 986f.; Gertrud Grunow lived in the apartment above see: Klee, Paul, “Brief an Lily Klee, München [Weimar], Fremdenheim Haus zur Sonne, am Horn 39. Sonntag, 16.1.21“ In: Paul Klee – Briefe an die Familie 1893–1940, ed. Felix Klee (Köln: DuMont, 1979), 971.

Lothar Schreyer lived in an appartment in the House of Charlotte von Stein see: Schreyer, Lothar, Erinnerungen an Sturm und Bauhaus: Was ist des Menschen Bild? (München: Langen-Müller, 1956), 143.

[21] According to the concept developed by literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, time is never conceived in isolation but always in connection with space, as the so-called Chronotopos. Chronotopoi describe the inseparable interweaving of time and space in literary (and cultural) representations. Time becomes perceptible through spatial expression, while space is structured and charged through temporality. Bakhtin, Mikhail M., The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981)

[22] See Busch-Salmen, Gabriele, Walter Salmen, and Christoph Michel, Der Weimarer Musenhof: Dichtung, Musik und Tanz, Gartenkunst, Geselligkeit, Malerei (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 1998)

[23] See e.g. Huschke, Wolfgang, Die Geschichte des Parkes von Weimar (Weimar: Böhlau, 1951), 52.

[24] Huschke, Wolfgang, “Das Tempelherrenhaus im Weimarer Park.” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Thüringische Geschichte und Altertumskunde (1940)

[25] See e.g. Niedermeier, Michael, “Freimaurer und Geheimbünde in den frühen Landschaftsgärten der Aufklärung.” In: Arkadische Kulturlandschaft und Gartenkunst, eds. Richard Faber and Christine Holste (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2010), 139–65.

A detailed Analysis on the Weimar context has been given by: Nickel, Almut Constanze, Goethes Römisches Haus: Ein Freimaurertempel (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2018)

[26] Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, “Brief an das Horfmarschallamt vom 02. April 1919,“ Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Nr.84, 1.

[27] See e.g.: Bothe, Rolf, and Peter Hahn, eds., Das frühe Bauhaus und Johannes Itten: Katalogbuch anlässlich des 75. Gründungsjubiläums des Staatlichen Bauhauses in Weimar (Weimar, Bern, Berlin: Verlag Gerd Hatje, 1994)

[28] Wagner, Christoph, and Michael Baumgartner, eds., Itten – Klee, Kosmos Farbe (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2012)

[29] Linse, Ulrich, “Die Mazdaznan-Pädagogik des Bauhaus-Meisters Johannes Itten.” Bauhaus Archiv Berlin, accessed January 18, 2018, https://www.bauhaus.de/files/Ulrich-Linse_Die-Mazdaznan-Paedagogik-des-Bauhaus-Meisters-Johannes-Itten.pdf

[30] See also: Busch, Ludger, “Das Bauhaus und Mazdaznan.” In: Das frühe Bauhaus und Johannes Itten: Katalogbuch anlässlich des 75. Gründungsjubiläums des Staatlichen Bauhauses in Weimar, eds. Rolf Bothe and Peter Hahn (Weimar, Bern, Berlin: Verlag Gerd Hatje, 1994), 83–90; and especially: Wagner, Christoph, ed., Esoterik am Bauhaus: eine Revision der Moderne? (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2009)

[31] Apart from Linse, numerous contributions have pointed to the critical dimensions of Itten’s work and his adherence to a religion shaped by racial ideology: Hujer, Kenneth, Janek Müller, and Niklas Hoffmann-Walbeck, Das Haus des weißen Mannes: eine Lithographie von Johannes Itten (1921) – Begleitpublikation zum Kunstfest (Weimar: Kunstfest Weimar, 2019)

Likewise, Anja Baumhoff has offered a detailed analysis of Itten’s patriarchal conception of gender: Baumhoff, Anja, “»Ich spalte den Menschen.« Geschlechterkonzeptionen bei Johannes Itten.” In: Das frühe Bauhaus und Johannes Itten: Katalogbuch anlässlich des 75. Gründungsjubiläums des Staatlichen Bauhauses in Weimar, ed. Rolf Bothe and Peter Hahn (Weimar, Bern, Berlin: Verlag Gerd Hatje, 1994), 91–99.

[32] Gropius, Walter, “Ansprache an die Studierenden des Staatlichen Bauhauses, gehalten aus Anlaß der Jahresausstellung von Schülerarbeiten im Juli 1919.” In: Das Bauhaus: 1919–1933; Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, ed. Hans M. Wingler (Bramsche: Gebr. Rasch & Co., 1962), 45. (translated)

[33] Schlemmer, Oskar, “Brief an Otto Meyer-Amden, 7. August 1920.” In: Das frühe Bauhaus und Johannes Itten: Katalogbuch anlässlich des 75. Gründungsjubiläums des Staatlichen Bauhauses in Weimar, eds. Rolf Bothe and Peter Hahn (Weimar, Bern, Berlin: Verlag Gerd Hatje, 1994), 456.

[34] Although Itten’s connection to mystical and spiritual influences is frequently associated with the Tempelherrenhaus, the spatial and atmospheric dimension of the surrounding park has so far remained largely unaddressed. The nonetheless highly insightful contributions by Linse, Jaeggi, or Schwinzer, as well as the related articles by Osamu Okuda and Wolfgang Pehnt discussed below, offer exemplary cases of this omission. Likewise observable in: Moore, Pádraic E., “A Mystic Milieu: Johannes Itten and Mazdaznan at Bauhaus Weimar.” Bauhaus Imaginista Journal (2019), http://www.bauhaus-imaginista.org/articles/2210/a-mystic-milieu.

[35] Itten, Johannes, “Brief an Anna Höllering, Wien vom 30. Oktober 1919.” In: Johannes Itten: Werke und Schriften, eds. Willy Rotzler, and Anneliese Itten (Zürich: Orell Füssli, 1978), 67. (translated)

[36] From: Rotzler, Willy, and Anneliese Itten, eds., Johannes Itten: Werke und Schriften (Zürich: Orell Füssli, 1978), 23f.

[37] Schlemmer, Oskar, “Brief Oskar Schlemmer an Otto Meyer-Amden, Weimar, 14. Juli 1921.” In: Das frühe Bauhaus und Johannes Itten: Katalogbuch anlässlich des 75. Gründungsjubiläums des Staatlichen Bauhauses in Weimar, eds. Rolf Bothe and Peter Hahn (Weimar, Bern, Berlin: Verlag Gerd Hatje, 1994), 458.

[38] As stated in: Meyer, Adolf, Ein Versuchshaus des Bauhaus, eds. Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy, Bauhausbücher 3 (München: Albert Langen Verlag, 1925), 77.

[39] Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, “Brief an das Ministerium des Innern vom 31.03.1920” Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Nr.200, 1b.

[40] Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, “Aufruf an alle Meister vom 1. Oktober 1920” Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Nr.201, 2.

[41] First mentioned within the Meisterrat oft he school in: Wahl, Volker, Ute Ackermann, Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, and Bauhaus-Archiv, Museum für Gestaltung, eds., “Sitzung des Meisterrates am 14. Mai 1920 [1] Protokoll der Sitzung.” In: Die Meisterratsprotokolle des Staatlichen Bauhauses Weimar 1919 bis 1925, vol. 6, Veröffentlichungen aus Thüringischen Staatsarchiven 6 (Weimar: Böhlaus Nachfolger, 2001), 84.

[42] Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, “Brief an das Ministerium des Innern vom 31.03.1920” Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Nr.200, 1b.

[43] As in an a polemic Article of the “Deutsche Bauzeitung” cited in: Borrmann, Norbert, Paul Schultze-Naumburg: 1869–1949; Maler, Publizist, Architekt; vom Kulturreformer der Jahrhundertwende zum Kulturpolitiker im Dritten Reich – ein Lebens- und Zeitdokument (Essen: Bacht, 1989), 124.

[44] Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, “Offener Brief an den Gemeindevorstand und Gemeinderat zu Weimar vom 21. Juli 1920.“, Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Nr.201, 1.

[45] Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, “Brief an den Gemeindevorstand Oberweimar vom 21. Februar 1920.“, Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Nr.201, 4.

[46] Wahl, Volker, Ute Ackermann, Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, and Bauhaus-Archiv, Museum für Gestaltung, eds., “Sitzung des Meisterrates am 7. Februar 1921 [1] Protokoll der Sitzung.” In: Die Meisterratsprotokolle des Staatlichen Bauhauses Weimar 1919 bis 1925, vol. 6, Veröffentlichungen aus Thüringischen Staatsarchiven 6 (Weimar: Böhlaus Nachfolger, 2001), 121.

[47] Wahl, Volker, Ute Ackermann, Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, and Bauhaus-Archiv, Museum für Gestaltung, eds., “Sitzung des Meisterrates am 7. Februar 1921 [1] Protokoll der Sitzung.” In: Die Meisterratsprotokolle des Staatlichen Bauhauses Weimar 1919 bis 1925, vol. 6, Veröffentlichungen aus Thüringischen Staatsarchiven 6 (Weimar: Böhlaus Nachfolger, 2001), 121.

[48] The commission to construct an extension to Mr. Itten’s hut and to establish a water supply in: Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, “Auftrag an Gerhard Schunke vom 28. September 1920” Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Nr.202, 1.

[49] Linse, Ulrich, “Die Mazdaznan-Pädagogik des Bauhaus-Meisters Johannes Itten.”, 14.

[50] Citroen, Paul, “Mazdaznan am Bauhaus (1964).” In: Das Bauhaus: Selbstzeugnisse von Meistern und Studenten, eds. Frank Whitford and Nora von Mühlendahl-Krehl (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt 1993), 62 (translated).

[51] See e.g. Wilhelm, Karin, “Die Bauhaus-Ausstellung in Weimar 1923 – Ein Rechenschaftsbericht.” In: Bauhaus Weimar 1919–1924, Materialien zum Bauhaus, unveränd. Nachdr. der “Bauhaus-Materialien 1 und 3”, Berlin 1984 und 1986 (Berlin: MD Berlin, 1996), 29–49.

[52] See e.g. Hahn, Peter, “Kampf der Geister: Itten und Gropius am frühen Bauhaus.” In: Johannes Itten: Wege zur Kunst, ed. Dolores Denaro (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2002), 256–73.; Droste, Magdalena, “Der Gropius-Itten-Konflikt.” In: Bauhaus: 1919–1933 (Köln: Benedikt Taschen Verlag, 1993), 46.

[53] Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, “Zusendung des Prospekts für das Normal- und Selbstbausystem Olof Boecker,” Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Nr.201, 59-62, 59.

[54] Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, “Zusendung des Prospekts für das Normal- und Selbstbausystem Olof Boecker,” Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Nr.201, 59-62, 61.

[55] Okuda, Osamu, “Versinkende Villen — aufsteigende Baracken.” In: Aufstieg und Fall der Moderne, eds. Rolf Bothe and Thomas Föhl (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 1999), 336–43.

[56] A personal report is attached to the prospectus in the file, praising the use of slag construction in a housing project in Merseburg. The advantage, it notes, lies in the exceptionally thorough standardization and mechanization of the construction process: Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, “Gutachten vom 15. März 1922,” Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Nr.201, 59-62, 63.

[57] Gropius, Walter, “Wohnhaus-Industrie,” In: Ein Versuchshaus des Bauhauses in Weimar, by Adolf Meyer, eds. Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy, Bauhausbücher 3 (München: Albert Langen Verlag, 1925), 5–14.

[58] Gropius, Walter, “Wohnhaus-Industrie”, 6. (translated)

[59] Okuda, Osamu, “»Diesseitig bin ich gar nicht fassbar« – Paul Klee und die Esoterik.” In: Esoterik am Bauhaus: eine Revision der Moderne?, ed. Christoph Wagner (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2009), 57–63, 60.

[60] Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, “Brief an den Gemeindevorstand vom 27.6.1921,” Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Nr.202, 24.

[61] Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, “Brief an Otto Rödiger vom 19.5.1921,” Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Nr.202, 15. And: Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, “Brief an Otto Rödiger vom 28.6.1921,” Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Nr.202, 25.

[62] Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, “Briefwechsel zwischen Otto Rödiger und dem Bauhaus,” Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Nr.202.

[63] See: “The directors of the aforementioned state geological offices must therefore most emphatically point out that the divining rod is entirely useless for locating any type of natural resources, including water. Above all, in all projects that are fully or partially funded by public means, the use of dowsing must be firmly rejected on the basis of scientific knowledge.” Prokop, Otto, and Wolf Wimmer, Der moderne Okkultismus: Parapsychologie und Paramedizin. Magie und Wissenschaft im 20. Jahrhundert (München: Urban & Fischer in Elsevier, 1987), 18. (translated)

[64] Thüringer Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, “Genehmigung des Baues des Musterwohnhauses am Horn durch das Bauamt bzw. die Baupolizei der Stadt Weimar und Übernahme von Verpflichtungen durch die Bauhaus-Siedlungsgenossenschaft,“ Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Nr.49.

[65] Meyer, Adolf, Ein Versuchshaus des Bauhauses in Weimar, eds. Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy, Bauhausbücher 3 (München: Albert Langen Verlag, 1925), 24.

[66] As hiss on Felix recalls in a quote printed in: Meyn, Robert, and Wolfgang Kertsen, Paul Klee: Weimarer Jahre 1921–25 (Weimar: ACC Galerie, 1992), 14.

[67] Probst, Hartmut, Christian Schädlich, Walter Gropius, and Hochschule für Architektur und Bauwesen Weimar, eds., “Erklärung wegen Meinungsverschiedenheiten am Bauhaus (Erklärung vom 3. Februar 1922).” In: Walter Gropius – Ausgewählte Schriften, 1. Aufl., vol. Teil 3 (Berlin: Verlag für Bauwesen, 1987), 81.

[68] See e.g. Bestgen, Ulrike, “Wie kann Weimar zu neuer Blüte gelangen? : ‘Gropius the Romantic’ und der vermeintliche Kampf gegen die klassische Weltanschauung.” In: Das Bauhaus kommt aus Weimar, eds. Ute Ackermann, Ulrike Bestgen, and Klassik Stiftung Weimar (Berlin / Weimar: Deutscher Kunstverlag; Klassik Stiftung Weimar, 2009)

[69] Müller-Wolff, Susanne. Ein Landschaftsgarten im Ilmtal: Die Geschichte des herzoglichen Parks in Weimar (Köln: Böhlau, 2007), 14.

[70] Krause, Karoline, “Ein klassischer Park für das Volk – Rezeption der Gartenkunst und Gartendenkmalpflege am Beispiel des Parks an der Ilm.” In: Weimarer Klassik in der Ära Honecker, eds. Lothar Ehrlich and Gunther Mai (Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2001), 285. (translated)

[71] Tabarasi, Ana-Stanca, Der Landschaftsgarten als Lebensmodell: zur Symbolik der „Gartenrevolution“ in Europa (Würzburg: Dissertation, Universität Roskilde, 2006 [publ. 2007])

[72] Pehnt, Wolfgang, “Blutwarmes Leben – einfachste Körperform. Zur Rezeption von Goethes Gartenhaus in Zeiten des Bauhauses.” In: Klassik und Avantgarde: das Bauhaus in Weimar 1919–1925, eds. Hellmut Seemann, Thorsten Valk, Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, and Klassik Stiftung Weimar (Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag, 2009), 68–85.

[73] Here cited from: Borrmann, Norbert, Paul Schultze-Naumburg: 1869–1949; Maler, Publizist, Architekt; vom Kulturreformer der Jahrhundertwende zum Kulturpolitiker im Dritten Reich – ein Lebens- und Zeitdokument (Essen: Bacht, 1989), 124. (translated)

[74] See e.g. Niedermeier, Michael, “Freimaurer und Geheimbünde in den frühen Landschaftsgärten der Aufklärung.” In: Arkadische Kulturlandschaft und Gartenkunst, eds. Richard Faber and Christine Holste (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2010), 139–65, 147f.

A short, yet uncommented hint on this connection to the Bauhaus is given in: Ackermann, Ute, “Das Bauhaus und die Weimarer Klassik.” In: Klassik und Avantgarde: das Bauhaus in Weimar 1919–1925, eds. Hellmut Seemann, Thorsten Valk, Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, and Klassik Stiftung Weimar, vol. 2009, Jahrbuch / Klassik-Stiftung Weimar 2009 (Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag, 2009)

Mats Werchohlad, M.Sc. in Urban Studies, explores spatial and transformational dynamics at the intersection of technology, education, and society. With a background in mechanical engineering and a master’s degree in Urban Studies, he integrates interdisciplinary approaches and thematic fields in both his teaching and research. His work addresses, among other things, the cultural-historical dimensions of smart cities and the heterotopic qualities of English landscape gardens.

He has worked as a scientific assistant at the Chair of Spatial Planning and Research at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and at the Institute for Transport and Space at the University of Applied Sciences Erfurt. Further projects and curatorial activities have been carried out within the framework of the Horizonte Initiative for Architectural Discourse, the Bauhaus Institute for History and Theory of Architecture and Planning, and the Venice Architecture Biennale. He is currently pursuing a doctoral project on environmental concepts and imaginaries at the historic Bauhaus.

Cite this article

Werchohlad, Mats. “A Garden in the Landscape: Situating micro- and environmental Histories of the early Bauhaus.” Journal of Black Mountain College Studies 16 (2025). https://www.blackmountaincollege.org/journal/volume-16/werchohlad/

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