Postcard from: A Bauhaus Pilgrimage through Weimar and Dessau

INSPIRATION | CABANA TRAVEL | WORLD OF CABANA

A century after the Bauhaus transformed the language of art, design and architecture, Anthea Gerrie follows its radical legacy back to Germany. From sleeping in the original Dessau school to tracing its origins in Weimar, she explores the buildings, objects and ideas that changed modern life — and discovers how a new generation is carrying its pioneering vision into the future.

BY ANTHEA GERRIE | CABANA TRAVEL | 4 SEPTEMBER 2026

Kandinsky's "Master House", Dessau © Bauhaus Dessau Foundation.

Subversive and degenerate, or the most innovative approach to the art of building ever devised? The Nazis’ belief that the Bauhaus was the former enriched the rest of the world when the iconic German design and architecture school closed forever in 1933. But the 14 years of its existence changed the world as its alumni fled the country to propagate the radical principles instilled in them across the planet.

From London to Chicago, Tel Aviv to Sao Paulo, there’s no shortage of Bauhaus masterpieces, whether, as in the case of student-turned-teacher Marcel Breuer and principal Mies van der Rohe, it’s an iconic chair or a whole building. But for the full story you need to go back to the source - and there’s no time better than this year, when Dessau, where the school fully flowered, is celebrating its centenary. Only in this industrial city can you live the futuristic dream created in the 1920s while getting a glimpse of tomorrow’s sustainable built environment as envisaged by a new generation of dreamers.

In Dessau, where seeds sown at the original Bauhaus campus in Weimar bloomed in the hands of Kandinsky, Klee, Breuer and other masters, you can sleep in the original student bedrooms and dine at the Kornhaus, where Bauhauslers hatched their ideas in a striking restaurant on the Elbe resembling a ship at anchor. It was in Dessau that the school established the new department of architecture where Breuer taught, though it was director Walter Gropius who designed the exquisite, not to be missed Masters’ Houses.

An overnight sleep in the school, a stroll away through leafy streets awash in handsomely boxy houses inspired by the teachers’ homes which prove Brutalism can have a pretty face, is an altogether more spartan, though unforgettable, experience.

The heavily-glazed building bakes in summer and there are no lifts to the spacious but starkly simple rooms with no private baths. But who cares about pattering down the corridor for ablutions when you can enjoy your own Breuer chair or Albers nest of tables while sleeping at a UNESCO World Heritage site for less than €100 per night?

Not content with one magnificent glass box - the Bauhaus school whose metal, glass and concrete products are still showcased in engaging exhibitions - the city of Dessau held an international competition to create a second, a museum with the size and climate control solutions needed to showcase the school’s huge and impressive collections of furniture, textiles, homewares, paintings, photographs and the artists who created them.

As dark, sexy, long and low as its counterpart in Weimar is tall, bright and boxy by comparison, the contents of the Dessau Museum’s display cabinets glow like jewels within, while pull-out boards tell the stories of less well-known students and their work as well as those who became household names.

Breuer and Mies van der Robe chairs at Bauhaus School Dessau, credit Anthea Gerrie

After this rich visual feast it’s an eight-minute stroll back to the future in the town center, where a disused Modernist department store has been repurposed to showcase the building materials of tomorrow, from mushrooms to wool and algae, all tried and tested and waiting to be universally adopted. This exhibition, Algae/Debris/CO2, is expected to close in October because the building cannot be weatherproofed to protect its contents over winter.

After the minimalism of Dessau the curlicues beauty of Weimar, where the Bauhaus started, comes as a shock. Even more anachronistic than a high-design school in an industrial city which needed more than wanted its presence, the school’s unlikely birth in the city of Goethe and Schiller was another bold bid to introduce the past to the future.

Even before the arrival of Walter Gropius in 1919 his architect predecessor Henry van der Velde had created an extraordinary art school with huge folded glass windows utterly futuristic for its time a decade earlier, and quite at odds with the Rodin sculpture in the lobby of the building. He might never have called for Gropius to follow in his footsteps had his Belgian nationality not made him an undesirable during World War I.

Named for van der Velde is the applied arts building where instruction took an extraordinary turn after Gropius took charge of both institutions in 1919. Here students studied a practical craft all morning, working in wood – the young Breuer was made head of the carpentry department – metal or stone before spending the afternoon in lectures given by artists.

An important discipline was theatre arts, led by Oskar Schlemmer, who created fantastic murals which remain the most visually compelling reason for exploring the Weimar school buildings, which are open and free to visit. After climbing the staircase to enjoy the mural, cross over to the art school and enjoy the graphics on its own back staircase wall leading to Walter Gropius’s office, itself designed as an exhibit to show how the school was creating innovative solutions for interiors as well as buildings.

But if Gropius’s radical office design and Schlemmer’s bold murals raised the eyebrows of officials, the case study Haus am Horn, the only Bauhaus building ever completed in Weimar, was the last straw. Engaging to visitors with its radical ideas – a spacious living-room for use by the whole family rather than a front parlour reserved for guests, the avant-garde Breuer dressing-table in a bedroom for the modern woman, her labour-saving kitchen and the children’s bedroom with colorful furniture designed to double as play equipment – it disgusted the Nazis to the point they considered reopening the house as an example of the degenerate architecture they had so successfully run out of town.

Bauhaus Museum Weimar, credit GNTB Francesco Carovillano

One legacy of the Nazi era which makes Weimar as much worth a visit as the Bauhaus school and 2019 museum built to showcase its own collection is The Elephant. The best hotel in town sits on beautiful Market Square and fields a fine kitchen with an extraordinary wine cellar, but its transformation from 1696 inn to 1938 neoclassical palace is down to a desire to please Hitler, who stayed here during his rise to power (less controversial guests have included Norman Mailer, Wim Wenders and the Pet Shop Boys).

In this pedestrianised corner of town you don’t see the buses which ring the perimeter proclaiming Buchenwald as their destination, the infamous camp whose hilltop memorial is visible from the top floor window of the Bauhaus Museum beside the staircase to the exit. Tragically, several students were murdered in the death camps, but they did not include Franz Ehrlich, who survived two years’ internment in Buchenwald by turning his skills to designing part of his own prison.

Berlin, where the school moved in 1933, surviving for just one semester, is the international gateway to both Dessau and Weimar, with several exhibitions to whet the appetite for the main campus visits. Get a grounding at the temporary Bauhaus Archive in Charlottenburg, then take in one of several gallery exhibitions running through autumn 2026.

Oskar Schlemmer mural at Bauhaus School Weimar, © Anthea Gerrie