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54-618: For The Architects Collaborative (TAC), an important modernist firm headed by seven Harvard graduates and Walter Gropius (then chair of the University's Department of Architecture within the Graduate School of Design ), the Center was one of their first important works. The building contains work from avant-garde Surrealist or Bauhaus artists Joan Miró , Josef Albers , Jean Arp and Herbert Bayer . A sculpture by Richard Lippold

108-528: A dozen photographs of factories and grain elevators in North America. A very influential text, this article had a strong influence on other European modernists, including Le Corbusier and Erich Mendelsohn , both of whom reprinted Gropius's grain elevator pictures between 1920 and 1930. Gropius's career was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I in 1914. He was drafted in August 1914 and served as

162-463: A faculty that included Paul Klee , Johannes Itten , Josef Albers , Herbert Bayer , László Moholy-Nagy , Otto Bartning and Wassily Kandinsky . In principle, the Bauhaus represented an opportunity to extend beauty and quality to every home through well designed industrially produced objects. The Bauhaus program was experimental and the emphasis was theoretical. One example product of the Bauhaus

216-734: A manifestation of his lifelong belief in the significance of teamwork, which he had already successfully introduced at the Bauhaus. Based in Cambridge, the original TAC partners included Norman C. Fletcher , Jean B. Fletcher , John C. Harkness , Sarah P. Harkness , Robert S. MacMillan , Louis A. MacMillen, and Benjamin C. Thompson . Among TAC's earliest works were two residential housing developments in Lexington, Massachusetts : Six Moon Hill and Five Fields . Each incorporated contemporary design ideas, reasonable cost, and practical thinking about how to support community life. Another early TAC work

270-565: A real person to an anecdotal one, a late book to an earlier, the one you see to you yourself; but I am not putting a value on a poet, only recognizing that he is one—and the way he is one. In the summer of 1917, Werfel left the frontline for the Military Press Bureau in Vienna, where he joined other notable Austrian writers serving as propagandists, among them Robert Musil , Rilke, Hugo von Hofmannsthal , and Franz Blei . Through

324-471: A sequence of poems from Werfel's wartime manuscript, Der Gerichtstag (Judgment Day, published in 1919) in his monthly journal, Der Jude ( The Jew ). and wrote of Werfel in his prefatory remark: Since I was first moved by his poems, I have opened (knowing well, I should say, it's a problem) the gates of my invisible garden [i.e., an imaginarium ] to him, and now he can do nothing for all eternity that would bring me to banish him from it. Compare, if you will,

378-593: A sergeant major at the Western front during the war years (getting wounded and almost killed) and then as a lieutenant in the signal corps . Gropius was awarded the Iron Cross twice ("when it still meant something," he confided to his friend Chester Nagel) after fighting for four years. Gropius then, like his father and his great-uncle Martin Gropius before him, became an architect. Gropius's career advanced in

432-715: A variegated-red brick watercourse and are defined by large ribbon windows. Coming from the Bauhaus , Gropius had been a pioneering innovator of educational architecture and many of his hallmarks can be seen years later in Harkness Commons. The physical Gropius hallmarks – large windows, flowing rooms, floating facades on raised pilotis – are all present here. Gropius makes clear statements for employing ribbon windows, "Our contemporary architectural conception of an intensified outdoor-indoor relationship through wide window openings and large undivided window panes has ousted

486-581: Is in a nearby courtyard. The buildings are now primarily used as a student center and as a dormitory complex for Harvard Law School . Located at the northern end of campus along Everett Street, the complex takes the traditional form of an academic quad with a modernist aesthetic, putting it at odds with the surrounding buildings. It is made up of seven buildings (five of which are connected by hallways), arranged around two central green spaces. It contains Story Hall, Dane Hall, Holmes Hall, Richards Hall, and Child Hall. The buildings' façades are yellow brick with

540-679: Is primarily known as the author of The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (1933, English tr. 1934, 2012), a novel based on events that took place during the Armenian genocide of 1915, and The Song of Bernadette (1941), a novel about the life and visions of the French Catholic saint Bernadette Soubirous , which was made into a Hollywood film of the same name . Born in Prague (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire ), now

594-559: Is remembered not only by his various buildings but also by the district of Gropiusstadt in Berlin. In the early 1990s, a series of books entitled The Walter Gropius Archive was published covering his entire architectural career. The CD audiobook Bauhaus Reviewed 1919–33 includes a lengthy English Language interview with Gropius. Upon his death his widow, Ise Gropius, arranged to have his collection of papers divided into early and late papers. Both parts were photographed with funds provided by

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648-650: Is the Graduate Center of Harvard University in Cambridge (1949/50). TAC would become one of the most well-known and respected architectural firms in the world before it closed its doors amidst financial problems in 1995. In 1967, Gropius was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member and became a full Academician in 1968. Gropius died on July 5, 1969, in Boston , Massachusetts, aged 86. He had been diagnosed with inflammation of

702-682: Is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture . He was a founder of Bauhaus in Weimar and taught there for several years, becoming known as a leading proponent of the International Style . Gropius emigrated from Germany to England in 1934 and from England to the United States in 1937, where he spent much of the rest of his life teaching at the Harvard Graduate School of Design . In

756-548: The Faguswerk in Alfeld-an-der-Leine, Germany , a shoe last factory. Although Gropius and Meyer only designed the facade, the glass curtain walls of this building demonstrated both the modernist principle that form reflects function and Gropius's concern with providing healthful conditions for the working class. The factory is now regarded as one of the crucial founding monuments of European modernism. Gropius

810-595: The New Objectivity movement, including a contribution to the Siemensstadt project in Berlin. Gropius left the Bauhaus in 1928 and moved to Berlin. Hannes Meyer took over the role of Bauhaus director. His work was also part of the architecture event in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics . The rise of Hitler in the 1930s would soon drive Gropius out of Germany. Before that, however, he did accept an invitation in early 1933 to compete for

864-577: The Royal Air Force in World War II . The research was to discover the most efficient way of setting fire to houses with incendiary bombs during bombing raids. The findings were used in planning raids such as the bombing of Hamburg in July 1943 . In 1945, Gropius was asked by the young founding members of The Architects Collaborative (TAC) to join as their senior partner. TAC represented

918-803: The Thyssen Foundation . The late papers, relating to Gropius's career after 1937, and the photos of the early ones, then went to the Houghton Library at Harvard University; the early papers and photos of the late papers went to the Bauhaus Archiv, then in Darmstadt , since reestablished in Berlin. Mrs. Gropius also deeded the Gropius House in Lincoln to Historic New England in 1980, now a house museum. The Gropius House

972-656: The potentially monotheistic religion of Akhenaton ) to occult allusions (Werfel had participated in séances with his friends Brod and Kafka ) and incorporate a parable from the Baháʼí Faith in the poem "Jesus and the Carrion Path". His bias for Christian subjects, as well as his antipathy for Zionism , eventually alienated many of his Jewish friends and readers, including early champions such as Karl Kraus . Others, however, stood by him, including Martin Buber, who published

1026-671: The 1958 film Me and the Colonel starring Danny Kaye ; Giselher Klebe 's opera Jacobowsky und der Oberst (1965) is also based on this play. Before his death, he completed the first draft of his last novel Star of the Unborn ( Stern der Ungeborenen ), which was published posthumously in 1946. Franz Werfel died of heart failure in Los Angeles in 1945 and was interred there in the Rosedale Cemetery . However, his body

1080-684: The Armenian and the later Jewish genocide , condemned "America's Armenian Jews for promoting in the U.S.A. the sale of Werfel's book". Werfel was forced to leave the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1933. His books were burned by the Nazis. Werfel left Austria after the Anschluss in 1938 and went to France, where they lived in a fishing village near Marseille. Visitors to their home at this time included Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Mann . After

1134-579: The Armenian refugee community in Jerusalem, inspired his novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh which drew world attention to the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman government . Werfel lectured on this subject across Germany. The Nazi newspaper Das Schwarze Korps denounced him as a propagandist of "alleged Turkish horrors perpetrated against the Armenians". The same newspaper, suggesting a link between

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1188-528: The Bauhaus philosophy in mind, every aspect of the homes and their surrounding landscapes was planned for maximum efficiency and simplicity. Gropius's house received a huge response and was declared a National Landmark in 2000. Gropius and his Bauhaus protégé Marcel Breuer both moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts , to teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (1937–1952) and collaborate on projects including The Alan I W Frank House in Pittsburgh and

1242-685: The Catholic orders that staffed the shrine. He vowed to write about the experience and, safe in the United States, he published The Song of Bernadette in 1941. Fry and Unitarian Waitstill Sharp organized a secret crossing over the Pyrenees on foot. Assisted by Justus Rosenberg , they went to Madrid and then traveled on to Portugal. They stayed in Monte Estoril, at the Grande Hotel D'Itália, between 8 September and 4 October 1940. On

1296-703: The German invasion and occupation of France during World War II, and the deportation of French Jews to the Nazi concentration camps , Werfel had to flee again. With the assistance of Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee in Marseille , he and his wife narrowly escaped the Nazi regime, finding shelter for five weeks in the pilgrimage town of Lourdes . He also received much help and kindness from

1350-517: The Gropius-Bau is named for Gropius's great-uncle, Martin Gropius , and is not associated with the Bauhaus. Franz Werfel Franz Viktor Werfel ( German: [fʁant͡s ˈvɛʁfl̩] ; 10 September 1890 – 26 August 1945) was an Austrian - Bohemian novelist , playwright , and poet whose career spanned World War I , the Interwar period , and World War II . He

1404-653: The Harvard campus that were built in the 1950s. In 1944, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Gropius was one of several refugee German architects who provided information to confirm the typical construction of German houses to the RE8 research department set up by the British Air Ministry . This was used to improve the effectiveness of air raids on German cities by the Bomber Command of

1458-750: The Master Houses (Meisterhäuser) (1925-1926) in Dessau, along with the Törten Housing Estate (Siedlung Dessau-Törten) which was built from 1926 to 1928. In 1927 he designed the Dessau City Employment office (Arbeitsamt), but left the Bauhaus and Dessau before construction began. The City Employment office was completed in 1929. He also designed large-scale housing projects in Berlin , Karlsruhe that were major contributions to

1512-636: The United States he worked on several projects with Marcel Breuer and with the firm The Architects Collaborative , of which he was a founding partner. In 1959, he won the AIA Gold Medal , one of the most prestigious awards in architecture. Born in Berlin , Walter Gropius was the third child of Walter Adolph Gropius and Manon Auguste Pauline Scharnweber (1855–1933), daughter of the Prussian politician Georg Scharnweber  [ de ] (1816–1894). Walter's great-uncle Martin Gropius (1824–1880)

1566-509: The approach developed at the Bauhaus. The Gropiuses believed their house could embody architectural qualities similar to those practiced today, such as simplicity, economy, and aesthetic beauty. Helen Storrow, a banker's wife and philanthropist, became Gropius's benefactor when she invested a portion of her land and wealth for the architect's home. She was so satisfied with the result that she gave more land and financial support to four other professors, two of whom Gropius designed homes for. With

1620-564: The capital of the Czech Republic, Werfel was the first of three children of a wealthy manufacturer of gloves and leather goods, Rudolf Werfel. His mother, Albine Kussi, was the daughter of a mill owner. His two sisters were Hanna (born 1896) and Marianne Amalie (born 1899). His family was Jewish . As a child, Werfel was raised by his Czech Catholic governess, Barbara Šimůnková, who often took him to mass in Prague's main cathedral. Like

1674-779: The children of other progressive German-speaking Jews in Prague, Werfel was educated at a Catholic school run by the Piarists , a teaching order that allowed for a rabbi to instruct Jewish students for their Bar Mitzvahs . This, along with his governess's influence, gave Werfel an early interest (and expertise) in Catholicism , which soon branched out to other faiths, including Theosophy and Islam , such that his fiction, as well as his nonfiction, provides some insight into comparative religion . Werfel began writing at an early age and, by 1911, had published his first book of poems, Der Weltfreund , which can be translated as "the friend to

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1728-672: The company-town Aluminum City Terrace project in New Kensington , Pennsylvania, before their professional split. In 1938 he was appointed Chair of the Department of Architecture, a post he held until his retirement in 1952. Gropius also sat on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Visiting Committee at the end of his career. The well-known architect designed the Richards and Child residence halls on

1782-514: The design of the new Reichsbank building and submitted a detailed plan. He also designed furniture, cars, high-rise housing developments Siedlung and an unrealized Palace of the Soviets in Moscow . Gropius was able to leave Nazi Germany in 1934 with the help of Maxwell Fry on the pretext of making a temporary visit to Italy for a film propaganda festival; he then fled to Britain to avoid

1836-670: The development of Werfel's career and influenced it in such a way that he became an accomplished playwright and novelist as well as poet. They married on 6 July 1929. In April 1924, Verdi – Roman der Oper (Novel of the Opera) was published by Zsolnay Verlag, establishing Werfel's reputation as a novelist. In 1926, Werfel was awarded the Grillparzer Prize by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and in Berlin, Max Reinhardt performed his play Juarez and Maximilian (depicting

1890-583: The fascist powers of Europe. Although not Jewish, his association with "degenerate" modern art despised by the Nazis meant he was obliged to emigrate when commissions dried up. He lived and worked in the artists' community associated with Herbert Read in Hampstead , London, as part of the Isokon group. Gropius arrived in the United States in February 1937, while their twelve-year-old daughter, Ati, finished

1944-701: The first decades of the twentieth century. With the outbreak of World War I, Werfel served in the Austro-Hungarian Army on the Russian front as a telephone operator. His duties both exposed him to the vicissitudes of total war as well as provided him with enough of a haven to continue writing Expressionist poems, ambitious plays, and letters voluminously. His eclectic mix of humanism , confessionalism , autobiography, as well as mythology and religiosity developed further during this time. His poems and plays ranged from scenes of ancient Egypt (notably

1998-412: The glands, and was admitted to hospital on 7 June. After an operation was performed successfully on 15 June, there was hope of a full recovery. Gropius described himself as a "tough old bird", and continued to make progress for about a week. However, his lungs became congested and could not supply proper amounts of oxygen to the blood and brain. He lost consciousness, and died in his sleep. Today, Gropius

2052-661: The latter, Werfel met and fell in love with Alma Mahler , widow of Gustav Mahler , the former lover of the painter Oskar Kokoschka , and the wife of the architect Walter Gropius , then serving in the Imperial German Army on the Western Front. Alma, who was also a composer, had already set one of Werfel's poems to music, despite Werfel's being much younger, shorter, and having Jewish features that she, being both anti-Semitic and attracted to Jewish men, initially found distasteful. Their love affair culminated in

2106-428: The most influential designs to emerge from Bauhaus. Facing political and financial difficulties in Weimar, Gropius and the Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925 following an offer from the city. Gropius designed the new Bauhaus Dessau school building in 1925–26 on commission from the city of Dessau. He collaborated with Carl Fieger , Ernst Neufert and others within his private architectural practice. Gropius also designed

2160-455: The office of the renowned architect and industrial designer Peter Behrens , one of the first members of the utilitarian school. His fellow employees at this time included Ludwig Mies van der Rohe , Le Corbusier , and Dietrich Marcks. Gropius left the firm of Behrens in 1910 and established a practice in Berlin with fellow employee Adolf Meyer . Together they share credit for one of the pioneering modernist buildings created during this period:

2214-544: The orphaned daughter of Ise's sister Hertha. Ise Gropius died on 9 June 1983 in Lexington, Massachusetts. Walter's sister Manon Burchard (1880–1975) is the great-grandmother of the German film and theater actresses Marie Burchard and Bettina Burchard  [ de ] , and of the curator and art historian Wolf Burchard . In 1908, after studying architecture in Munich and Berlin for four semesters, Gropius joined

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2268-550: The postwar period. Henry van de Velde , the master of the Grand-Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar was asked to step down in 1915 due to his Belgian nationality. His recommendation for Gropius to succeed him led eventually to Gropius's appointment as master of the school in 1919. It was this academy which Gropius transformed into the world-famous Bauhaus (a.k.a. Gropius School of Arts), attracting

2322-425: The premature birth of a son, Martin, in August 1918. Martin, who was given the surname of Gropius, died in May of the following year. Despite attempts to save his marriage to Alma, with whom he had a young daughter, Manon , Gropius reluctantly agreed to a divorce in 1920. Ironically, Alma refused to marry Werfel for the next nine years. However, Alma, more so than with her first two husbands and lovers, lent herself to

2376-404: The same day they checked out, they boarded the S.S. Nea Hellas headed for New York City, arriving on 13 October. Werfel and his family settled in Los Angeles, where they met other German and Austrian emigrants, such as Mann, Reinhardt, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold . In southern California, Werfel wrote his final play, Jacobowsky and the Colonel ( Jacobowsky und der Oberst ) which was made into

2430-424: The school year in England. The house the Gropiuses built for themselves in 1938 in Lincoln, Massachusetts (now known as Gropius House ) was influential in bringing International Modernism to the US, but Gropius disliked the term: "I made it a point to absorb into my own conception those features of the New England architectural tradition that I found still alive and adequate." In designing his house, Gropius used

2484-422: The small, cage-like, 'Georgian' window." Further, explaining why TAC designed the structures in a modernist style, Gropius said, "if the college is to be the cultural breeding ground for the coming generation, its attitude should be creative, not imitative." Walter Gropius Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-American architect and founder of the Bauhaus School , who

2538-410: The struggle in 1860's Mexico between the Republican leader Benito Juárez and the French-backed Emperor Maximilian ). By the end of the decade, Werfel had become one of the most important and established writers in German and Austrian literature and had already merited one full-length critical biography. Werfel's journey (with his wife Alma) in 1930, to British-ruled Palestine, and his encounter with

2592-741: The world" as well as philanthropist, humanitarian, and the like. By this time, Werfel had befriended other German Jewish writers who frequented Prague's Café Arco  [ de ; cs ] , chief among them Max Brod and Franz Kafka , and his poetry was praised by such critics as Karl Kraus , who published Werfel's early poems in Kraus's journal, Die Fackel (The Torch). In 1912, Werfel moved to Leipzig, where he became an editor for Kurt Wolff 's new publishing firm, where Werfel championed and edited Georg Trakl 's first book of poetry. While he lived in Germany, Werfel's milieu grew to include Else Lasker-Schüler , Martin Buber , Rainer Maria Rilke , among other German-language writers, poets, and intellectuals in

2646-525: Was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988 and is now available to the public for tours. Bauhaus Center Tel Aviv in the White City recognizes the greatest concentration of Bauhaus buildings in the world. In 1959, he received the AIA Gold Medal . On May 17, 2008, Google Doodle commemorated Walter Gropius' 125th birthday. In 1996, the Bauhaus Building and the Master Houses were added to list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites . NB: The building in Niederkirchnerstraße , Berlin known as

2700-476: Was an influence on him at that time. In 1920, the Bauhaus was given its first major commission that would utilize almost all of the workshops in the school. This commission was for a house for Adolf Sommerfeld made from wood. The architectural designs for the house came from Gropius and Adolf Meyer. The Sommerfeld House was completed in 1921. In 1923, Gropius designed his famous door handles, now considered an icon of 20th-century design and often listed as one of

2754-469: Was born in 1916. When Manon died of polio at age 18, in 1935, composer Alban Berg wrote his Violin Concerto in memory of her (it is inscribed "to the memory of an angel"). Gropius and Mahler divorced in 1920 (She had by that time established a relationship with Franz Werfel , whom she later married). Gropius married Ilse Frank, known as Ise, on 16 October 1923; they remained together until his death in 1969. The couple adopted Beate Frank known as Ati ,

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2808-423: Was commissioned in 1913 to design a car for the Prussian Railroad Locomotive Works in Königsberg . This locomotive was unique and the first of its kind in Germany and perhaps in Europe. Other works of this early period include the office and factory building for the Werkbund Exhibition (1914) in Cologne . Gropius published an article about "The Development of Industrial Buildings" in 1913, which included about

2862-420: Was the architect of the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin and a follower of Karl Friedrich Schinkel , with whom Walter's great-grandfather Carl Gropius, who fought under Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher at the Battle of Waterloo, had shared a flat as a bachelor. In 1915, Gropius married Alma Mahler (1879–1964), widow of Gustav Mahler . Walter and Alma's daughter, named Manon after Walter's mother,

2916-442: Was the armchair F 51, designed for the Bauhaus's directors room in 1920 – nowadays a re-edition in the market, manufactured by the German company TECTA/Lauenfoerde. In 1919, Gropius was involved in the Glass Chain utopian expressionist correspondence under the pseudonym "Mass." Usually more notable for his functionalist approach, the Monument to the March Dead , designed in 1919 and executed in 1920, indicates that expressionism

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