To this day, the Bauhaus is regarded as the cradle of modern architecture and design. But ‘Bauhaus’ means more than just the cubic white house with the flat roof, the tubular steel chair or the Bauhaus lamp. The Bauhaus was also an educational institution, which today still serves as a model for others. Its teachers included world-renowned artists such as Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe.

The film paints a picture of this unique modern art institution from its revolutionary beginnings in the wake of the First World War to its dissolution and the emigration and further careers of various Bauhauslers, even the entanglements of some with National Socialist Germany. These stages are predominantly recalled by former Bauhaus students of both sexes. The Bauhaus Masters have their say in archive material.

This comprehensive critical film portrait of the Bauhaus’s artistic and political objectives gives insight into the essence of the Bauhaus principles, the conflicts that led to the school’s relocation from Weimar to Dessau, the dissolution of the school in the National Socialist era, the construction activities in the fledgling State of Israel, and the emergence of the Bauhaus myth in the USA.

104 min. Directed by Niels Bolbrinker and Kerstin Stutterheim