In 1924, the house was sold to an attorney. The attorney lived there until 1938 and made changes to the building. He sold it in 1938 to the Deutsche Arbeitsfront DAF, or German Labor Front, the unified organization of employers and employees during the National Socialist, or Nazi, period. The German Labor Front proposed tearing down the house to build an education center, Siebenbrodt says. As the war began, these plans were dropped.
The central room was lit only by a panoramic window in the work niche and sandblasted clerestory windows. Such reticence was desired and is reminiscent of the Japanese tatami rooms. The Bauhaus teachers, in fact, included elements of Far Eastern meditation techniques in their instruction. “That is the esoteric aspect of the Bauhaus, whose representatives were painter and designer Johannes Itten and painter and architect Georg Muche,” Siebenbrodt says. “Itten later joined the Mazdaznan sect and also recruited followers at Bauhaus. Back then, Gropius fought strenuously against this, so that their influence would not grow any stronger.”
Wooden side-hung glazed doors, serving also as windows, were installed in the living rooms, while space-saving bottom-hung windows were chosen for the kitchen — all with polished plate glass. In home construction in 1923, simple window glass punctuated with striations and cavities generally was the norm. But a quality product was used for the Haus am Horn that was thicker and thus a better heat insulator. Special hinges designed by the Bauhaus students maximized window openings while allowing access to every part of the window for cleaning.
The children’s room system was manufactured briefly by the Bauhaus workshops for kindergarten classrooms. “We searched for a long time for an original preserved example and hit pay dirt a few years ago, when we found one in private possession,” Siebenbrodt says. “Today it belongs to the Bauhaus Museum. Here you are only looking at a reproduction.”
This modular system is older than Le Corbusier’s Modulor. The lowest box is the right height for children. Stand it on edge and you have a table. The big boxes can serve as adult seating. The unit with a closed door and window is not a single-function display case but becomes, on opening, a puppet theater. The combinations are almost endless. “And you don’t have to explain it to children; they understand it intuitively,” Siebenbrodt says.
“The works on display here all came from students,” Siebenbrodt says. “It’s amazing they were all identified by name because anything designed by students actually belongs to the school.” The children’s room was furnished as a multifunctional adventure playground. It was conceived by a student, Alma Buscher, from the woodcarving workshop. She also designed the ceiling light fixture. It was conceived as a cinematographic apparatus and was originally supposed to be lowered by crank so children could place their cardboard cutouts and similar objects on it. “Think about the fact that Moholy-Nagy invented his famous Light-Space Modulator shortly after that,” Siebenbrodt says with a wink. “He might have gone through the workshops and allowed himself to be inspired by Buscher’s light.”
Benita Otte designed the built-in kitchen; this is a reconstruction consistent with historical photographs. This kitchen was created three years before Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s 1926 kitchen in Frankfurt, Germany — the prototype of modern built-in kitchens. It’s certainly possible that Schütte-Lihotzky had seen this kitchen or pictures of it. The Association of German Architects moved its 1923 annual convention to Weimar, and a broad sampling of its members visited the Haus am Horn. In addition, Gropius’ office director and site manager for the Haus am Horn, Adolf Meyer, later went to Frankfurt, where he worked on the New Frankfurt public housing program with Ernst May.
The building was erected in the Bauhaus garden, where students farmed and produced supplies for the school’s canteen. Innovative materials were used in the building. The wall and ceiling structures are made of lightweight building blocks of cement-bonded slag concrete, which form a double-skin masonry wall with Torfoleum insulation in between. The slim, energy-efficient material saved on transportation and heating expenses. “We have here what is probably one of the first eco homes in history,” Siebenbrodt says. “Because of the new method of construction, heating costs were reduced by 50 percent compared with other homes of the period.”
The experimental Haus am Horn was designed not by an architect, but rather by a painter and graphic designer, Georg Muche, who was the head of the weaving workshop at the Bauhaus. Students who later achieved recognition also participated in the project. One was Marcel Breuer, who designed the living room furniture and the furnishings for the “lady’s room.” Marta Erps wove rugs, and Bauhaus master Lászó Moholy-Nagy designed lighting for the “man’s room.”
The core concept was the reunification of all artistic disciplines,” says Michael Siebenbrodt, director of the Haus am Horn and curator of the Bauhaus Museum. “At the Bauhaus, everyone worked as part of a team. In all of the workshops, they created standardized products for industrial production. Bauhaus was not about conveying a certain style, for style means imitation. Instead, the Bauhaus was a college for invention.”
Haus am Horn survived the changes and remains standing today. After World War II, the property was transferred to the city of Weimar. A Bauhaus University professor lived there with his family for many years. In 1996, the Haus am Horn and other Bauhaus sites were declared a UNESCO World Heritage site. Weimar citizens have grown proud of the “crazy” artists of yesteryear and the fact that one of the most influential schools of the 20th century was founded in their city. The Haus am Horn was renovated, and today the building’s leaseholder is the Circle of Friends of the Bauhaus University in Weimar. In 2017, the house will be transferred as part of the Bauhaus Museum to the Weimar Classics Foundation.
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