Hannes Meyer and the Red Bauhaus-Brigade in the Soviet Union (1930-1937)

A photo gallery & translation

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Image: Poster for an expo of the
Bauhaus Dessau in Moscow (1931)

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An extract of an interview from Pravda, 1930:

Hannes Meyer: After many years of working within the capitalist system I am convinced that working under such conditions is quite senseless.  In view of our Marxist and revolutionary conception of the world we, revolutionary architects, are at the mercy of the insoluble contradictions of a world built on animal individualism and the exploitation of man by man.  I have said, and I say again, to all architects, all engineers, all builders:

Our way is and must be that of the revolutionary proletariat, that of the communist party, the way of those who are building and achieving socialism.

I am leaving for the USSR to work among people who are forging a true revolutionary culture, who are achieving socialism, and who are living in that form of society for which we have been fighting here under the conditions of capitalism.

I beg our Russian comrades to regard us, my group and myself, not as heartless specialists, claiming all kinds of special privileges, but as fellow workers with comradely views ready to make a gift to socialism and the revolution of all our knowledge, all our strength, and all the experience that we have acquired in the art of building.

[From Pravda, Berlin dispatch dated October 10th, 1930]

And here are some exceedingly rare photographs of the second Bauhaus director, Hannes Meyer, along with his team of architects, in the Soviet Union.

Image gallery

9 thoughts on “Hannes Meyer and the Red Bauhaus-Brigade in the Soviet Union (1930-1937)

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  2. Pingback: Hannes Meyer and the Red Bauhaus-Brigade in the Soviet Union (1930-1937) | Association Concert Urbain

  3. There are some intriguing links between Hannes Meyer and Mart Stam. Mart Stam went to Russia as well as part of the May Brigade, where he met Lotte Beese. Lotte Beese had an affair with Hannes Meyer at the Bauhaus before she hooked up with Stam. She left the Bauhaus as a result of becoming pregnant with a son, Peter. Stam and Lotte Beese married in 1934, she became an influential modernist and urban planner in her own right in the Netherlands.
    Hannes Meyer did a special issue of ABC – Beiträge zum Bauen in the twenties, the Swiss avant-garde journal of which Hans Schmidt and Mart Stam were the driving forces. Apparently Stam was asked to lead the Bauhaus after Gropius, (I will double-check), but he felt he was too young.

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