The Haus am Horn is a domestic house in

Weimar Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...

, Germany, designed by Georg Muche. It was built for the Bauhaus ''Werkschau'' (English: ''Work show'') exhibition which ran from July to September 1923. It was the first building based on Bauhaus design principles, which revolutionized 20th century architectural and aesthetic thinking and practice In keeping with the Bauhaus philosophy of teaching via practical experience and working with industry, a number students were involved with the building project. In 1996 the building was inscribed as part of the

UNESCO World Heritage Site A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for h ...

now called the

Bauhaus and its Sites in Weimar, Dessau and Bernau Bauhaus and its Sites in Weimar, Dessau and Bernau is a World Heritage Site in Germany, comprising six separate sites which are associated with the Bauhaus art school. It was designated in 1996 with four initial sites, and in 2017 two further s ...

, because of its testimony to the architectural influence of the Bauhaus movement.

Description

It is a simple cubic design with a flat roof, utilizing steel and concrete in its construction. Saving energy was an important consideration as the deprivations of World War I fuel shortages were still fresh in mind. The main

clerestory In architecture, a clerestory ( ; , also clearstory, clearstorey, or overstorey) is a high section of wall that contains windows above eye level. Its purpose is to admit light, fresh air, or both. Historically, ''clerestory'' denoted an upper l ...

-lit living area is at the core, with the other rooms around it. Only the work niche of the living room has a wall that directly faces the outside. There is a basement level for utility use such as washing and drying clothes. The walls have three layers: an external concrete wall; an inner insulating layer made of a peat-based material called 'Torfoleum'; and the interior wall lining. The windows were larger on the south and west sides; the northern side was almost without windows. The house had four bedrooms, described as the lady's room, the gentleman's room, the children's room and the guest room. It also had a kitchen, pantry and a separate dining room, a living room with a work space off it, and a separate toilet and bathroom. It had coal-fired central heating and a gas-fueled

Junkers Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke AG (JFM, earlier JCO or JKO in World War I, English: Junkers Aircraft and Motor Works) more commonly Junkers , was a major German aircraft and aircraft engine manufacturer. It was founded there in Dessau, Ge ...

boiler in the bathroom, and a gas kitchen stove. Heating and ventilation shafts were fitted in the corners of the living room.Markgraf, Monika (ed.) (2018) ''Bauhaus World Heritage Site'' (English edition). Leipzig: Spector Books The house was built away from the main Bauhaus campus, at 61 am Horn, a street of upper-middle class

Gründerzeit (; "founders' period") was the economic phase in 19th-century Germany and Austria before the great stock market crash of 1873. In Central Europe, the age of industrialisation had been taking place since the 1840s. That period is not precisel ...

villas. The plot was previously used as a vegetable garden to supply fruit and vegetables for the Bauhaus canteen. All the furniture and fittings were made in the Bauhaus workshops.

László Moholy-Nagy László Moholy-Nagy (; ; born László Weisz; July 20, 1895 – November 24, 1946) was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as a professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the i ...

designed the lights, which were made in the Bauhaus metal workshop.

Marcel Breuer Marcel Lajos Breuer ( ; 21 May 1902 – 1 July 1981), was a Hungarian-born modernist architect and furniture designer. At the Bauhaus he designed the Wassily Chair and the Cesca Chair, which ''The New York Times'' have called some of the most im ...

, who was a student at the time, designed furniture, including the built-in cabinetry. Alma Siedhoff-Buscher designed the furniture and toys for the children's room. The kitchen was designed by Benita Koch-Otte and built by Erich Brendel (1898-1987). It was a source of inspiration for the

Frankfurt kitchen The Frankfurt kitchen was a milestone in domestic architecture, considered the forerunner of modern fitted kitchens, for it was the first kitchen in history built after a unified concept, i.e. low-cost design that would enable efficient work. It ...

, designed by

Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky Margarete "Grete" Lihotzky (born 23 January 1897 in the Margareten district of Vienna, Austria-Hungary – 18 January 2000) was an Austrian architect and a communist activist in the Austrian resistance to Nazism. She is mostly remembered to ...

in 1926. designed the kitchen ceramics, which were labeled to show what each item should contain. Koch-Otte also designed and wove the carpet for the children's room.Blümm, Anke; Ullrich, Martina (eds) (2019) ''Haus am Horn'' (English edition). Munich: Hirmer Verlag / Klassik Stiftung Weimar Alfred Arndt and Josef Maltan (1902-1975) planned the interior colour scheme, which was rediscovered during restoration work carried out in 1998–99. They used a calming green-yellow for the living room and brighter colours for the rooms on the colder side of the house.

Reception

There was a lot of interest in the house during the ''Werkschau'' exhibition and streams of people came to visit it. The local residents gave it the nickname ''"die Kaffeemühle"'' (the coffee grinder) because of its square shape and clerestory roof, which resemble a typical early 20th century

coffee grinder A burr mill, or burr grinder, is a mill used to grind hard, small food products between two revolving abrasive surfaces separated by a distance usually set by the user. When the two surfaces are set far apart, the resulting ground material is c ...

. The reception by the media ranged between sympathetic admiration and, more often, open rejection.Knorr, Susan; Kern, Ingolf; Welzbacher, Christian (2012) ''Bauhaus Reisebuch'', Bonn: Dumont Although the reviews of the house were mixed, the most popular items were the toys and multi-functional toy cupboard in the children's room designed by Siedhoff-Buscher. This displeased the director of the Bauhaus

Walter Gropius Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-American architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who, along with Alvar Aalto, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, is widely regarded as one ...

, as he thought that the school being well known for designing products for children would lessen its academic standing. The architects

Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloy ...

and

Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , , ), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture. He was ...

expressed admiration for the design, whilst traditionalists like

Paul Schultze-Naumburg Paul Schultze-Naumburg (10 June 1869 – 19 May 1949) was a German traditionalist architect, painter, publicist and author. A leading critic of modern architecture, he joined the NSDAP in 1930 (aged 61) and became an important advocate of Naz ...

were critical.

History

The Haus am Horn was built for the first exhibition of work by the Bauhaus design school in 1923, which had been founded in Weimar in 1919. The building was based on designs by Georg Muche, a painter and a teacher at the school.Klassik Stiftung Weimar. Haus am Horn
. Retrieved 24 November 2018 It was thought at the time that it would be a model for houses on an envisioned Bauhaus campus, which was to have a housing estate for the school's teachers, but this never came to fruition. For this reason the house is sometimes called the ''"Musterhaus"'' in German, i.e. a

show home Show or The Show may refer to: Competition, event, or artistic production * Agricultural show, associated with agriculture and animal husbandry * Animal show, a judged event in the hobby of animal fancy ** Cat show ** Dog show ** Horse show ** Sp ...

. Gropius had planned to design it himself, but in a democratic ballot students chose a design Muche had originally planned as a house for himself and his wife. At the time the Bauhaus had no architecture department to manage the project, so Gropius' own architecture firm took on the work, completing the building in only four months. The construction was overseen by Adolf Meyer. The project was financed with an interest-free loan from , a German-Jewish Berlin real estate developer, for whom Gropius, with contributions from Bauhaus staff and students, had built the , a villa in

Berlin-Lichterfelde Lichterfelde () is a locality in the borough of Steglitz-Zehlendorf in Berlin, Germany. Until 2001 it was part of the former borough of Steglitz, along with Steglitz and Lankwitz. Lichterfelde is home to institutions like the Berlin Botanical Ga ...

, in 1920–21.

After the exhibition

The Werkschau exhibition lasted three months and after that, as had been agreed, the house and its contents became Sommerfeld's property. In December 1923 he put the house on the market and had the furniture transported to Berlin.Stadje, Sonia (2015
Kleine weiße Würfel? Das Bauhaus, De Stijl und ihren ersten realisierten Bauten - eine Architekturbetrachtung
pp. 95-100. Hamburg: disserta Verlag on Google Books. Retrieved 2 May 2019 Most of these items have gone missing over the years, but the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation has a dressing table from the "lady's room" and a glass cabinet from the living room, both designed by Marcel Breuer. The Bauhaus Museum Weimar has a copy of the toy cupboard designed by Siedhoff-Buscher, which was made at around the same time as the exhibition. Copies of these three pieces of furniture were rebuilt for the 2019 restoration of the house.Helbing, Michael (15 January 2019
Weimar startet Bauhaus-Jubiläum im „Haus Am Horn“
in Thüringer Allgemeine. Retrieved 2 May 2019Klassik Stifftung Weimar. Haus Am Horn ab 18. Mai 2019 wiedereröffnet
Retrieved 24 May 2019 The house remained empty until September 1924 when it was sold to a lawyer, Franz Kühn, who engaged the architect Ernst Flemming to make a number of alterations. Between 1926 and 1933, the changes included adding a verandah, extending the living room and children's room, adding a room to the western corner, and creating direct external access to the cellar. In April 1938 Kühn was compelled to sell house to the

German Labour Front The German Labour Front (german: Deutsche Arbeitsfront, ; DAF) was the labour organisation under the Nazi Party which replaced the various independent trade unions in Germany during Adolf Hitler's rise to power. History As early as March 1933, ...

, (German:''Deutsche Arbeitsfront'' (DAF)), who planned to demolish it and build an Adolf Hitler School on the plot, however World War II put a halt to these plans. The DAF let the house to a German army officer and his family for the duration of the war. In September 1945 the occupying Soviet military forces confiscated the house from the DAF and put it under the administration of Weimar City Council, who let the property to residential tenants. In 1951 it became ''Volkseigenturm'' (public property) in the ownership of the city council. Until 1971, a number of families lived there and further alterations were made.

Bernd Grönwald

In September 1971 (1942-1991) rented the house and lived there with his wife and three sons. He was a lecturer in architectural theory and history at the ''Hochschule für Architektur und Bauwesen Weimar'', a predecessor of the Bauhaus University Weimar. In 1980, he became the Dean of Architecture and in 1986 he was also appointed vice-president of the . The academy was a government agency that operated as the central research institution for architecture and construction in

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

. Grönwald was also a functionary of the

SED sed ("stream editor") is a Unix utility that parses and transforms text, using a simple, compact programming language. It was developed from 1973 to 1974 by Lee E. McMahon of Bell Labs, and is available today for most operating systems. sed w ...

, the ruling political party.Schwarz, Marietta (presenter) (8 March 2019
100 Jahre Bauhaus Weimar: Der Mann mit dem Schlüssel
radio documentary (50 min), broadcast by

Deutschlandfunk Deutschlandfunk (DLF, ''Broadcast Germany'') is a public-broadcasting radio station in Germany, concentrating on news and current affairs. It is one of the four national radio channels produced by Deutschlandradio. History Broadcasting in th ...

(includes PDF transcript). Retrieved 2 May 2019 Grönwald had an interest in modernism and the Bauhaus. He had many contacts with former Bauhaus students and staff, including Georg Muche, both within and outside of East Germany. Because he was a trusted supporter of the regime, he was allowed to travel to the West to conduct research. He restored parts of the house that had been damaged by age and damp and began the process of getting the property historic monument protection status, which it was given in 1973. In September 1973 he set up a small exhibition about the history of the house in the living room. Although it was the family's private home, they allowed the public to visit it. During the 27 years they lived in the house, over 40,000 people came. From 1976, Grönwald organised Bauhaus colloquiums to promote research about the house and the Bauhaus in general. Grönwald had difficulties accepting life after German reunification and committed suicide in January 1991. His family continued to live in the Haus am Horn until May 1998.

1998-2017

From 1998 until 2017 the City of Weimar leased the building to the ''Freundeskreis der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar'' ('Friendship circle of the Bauhaus University Weimar') which instigated a restoration in 1998–99, during which the additions from 1926 to 1933 were removed. University staff and students used the building and over 30 exhibitions and 300 events were held in it. It was open to the public several days a week.

Haus am Horn today

Since August 2017 the building has been owned by the Klassik Stiftung Weimar.Bauhaus University Weimar. Freundekskreis. Haus am Horn.
Retrieved 25 November 2018 In preparation for the 2019 Bauhaus centenary celebrations, the house was closed for a major restoration in 2018–19, which cost 838,000

Euros The euro ( symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens ...

. It reopened on 18 May 2019, the 136th anniversary of Walter Gropius's birthday.

References

External links

Application for a Building Permit for the Haus Am Horn, Weimar

UNESCO.Bauhaus and its Sites in Weimar, Dessau and Bernau

Klassik Stiftung Weimar. Haus am Horn
{{Authority control Bauhaus Architecture in Germany 1920s architecture Modernist architecture in Germany World Heritage Sites in Germany Buildings and structures in Thuringia Historic house museums in Germany Tourist attractions in Thuringia Restored and conserved buildings