Walter Peterhans (12 June 1897 – 12 April 1960) was a German photographer best known as a teacher and course leader of photography at the

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the , was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined Decorative arts, crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., ...

from 1929 until 1933, and at the

Reimann School The Reimann School of Art and Design was a private art school which was founded in Berlin in 1902 by Albert Reimann, and re-established in Regency Street, Pimlico, London in January 1937 after persecution by the Nazis. It was the first commerci ...

in Berlin under

Hugo Häring Hugo Häring (11 May 1882 – 17 May 1958) was a German architect and architectural writer best known for his writings on "organic architecture", and as a figure in architectural debates about functionalism in the 1920s and 1930s, though he had ...

. In the 1930s, Peterhans was a proponent of the

Neues Sehen The ''Neues Sehen'', also known as New Vision or ''Neue Optik'', was a movement, not specifically restricted to photography, which was developed in the 1920s. The movement was directly related to the principles of the Bauhaus. ''Neues Sehen'' con ...

(New Vision) movement, taking close-up, still-life photographs of everyday objects and images that played with unusual angles and lighting. At the Bauhaus, Peterhans's teaching involved using the theories of

Kant Immanuel Kant (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, et ...

Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...

and

Pythagoras Pythagoras of Samos (; BC) was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher, polymath, and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of P ...

to explain how beauty is constructed in the mind and how it can be created in works of art. Peterhans immigrated to Chicago in 1938 to teach the 'visual training' course to architecture students at

Illinois Institute of Technology The Illinois Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Illinois Tech and IIT, is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the m ...

under the direction of

Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect, academic, and interior designer. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. He is regarded as one of the pionee ...

.Bauhaus100. Walter Peterhans
Retrieved 11 June 2017 The course consisted of ten units to be completed over four semesters. The course was so successful that it continued for over thirty years after Peterhans's death. In 1953, Peterhans was part of the founding core faculty at the

Ulm School of Design The Ulm School of Design () was a college of design based in Ulm, Germany. It was founded in 1953 by Inge Aicher-Scholl, Otl Aicher and Max Bill, the latter being first rector of the school and a former student at the Bauhaus. The HfG quickl ...

(Hochschule für Gestaltung, 1953–1968) in Germany, which became a renowned, influential design school. In the United States he was briefly married to American architect Gertrude Lempp Kerbis before he married Brigitte Schlaich, also an architect, in 1957. He died of an unexpected heart attack at the house of his in-laws in Stetten im Remstal, near Stuttgart, and is buried there. The

Museum Folkwang Museum Folkwang is a major collection of 19th- and 20th-century art in Essen, Germany. The museum was established in 1922 by merging the Essener Kunstmuseum, which was founded in 1906, and the private Folkwang Museum of the collector and patr ...

Essen Essen () is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and Dortmund, as well as ...

holds the copyright to Peterhans's work.Museum Folkwang. Department of Photography
Retrieved 11 November 2018

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Peterhans, Walter 1897 births 1960 deaths Photographers from Frankfurt Academic staff of the Bauhaus Illinois Institute of Technology faculty