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The Disappearing Bauhaus: Architecture and its Public in the Early Federal Republic

Contribution and context: This essay appears as a chapter in Bauhaus Construct: Fashioning Identity, Discourse and Modernism edited by Jeffrey Saletnik and Robin Schuldenfrei. This collection of essays marked a turning point in consideration of the Bauhaus by offering a revisionist account from a variety of critical perspectives. Schwartz’s essay represents an original reinterpretation of the reception of the Bauhaus in postwar West Germany and is the only contribution to look at architecture in a volume mainly devoted to design history. Schwartz’s essay has been singled out often in the many published reviews of the volume.

Research imperatives and process: In this book chapter, Frederic Schwartz looks beyond stylistic evidence to the discussions of the built environment not only in the professional discourse of architects but contemporary literature, philosophy and psychology to trace what he defines as the emergence of a new architectural public, showing the changing way in which architecture could be discussed as a matter of general political importance. It pays careful attention to discursive resistances that resulted from the need to negotiate anxieties about the historical complicity of architects in the political projects of both the left and the right, before, during and after the Second World War.