Christmas in Weimar, 1919
"The Will to Style: Utopian Thinkers at the Weimar Bauhaus, 1919-25" (Chapter 31)
Students at the Weimar Bauhaus State School generally didn’t have much in the way of personal belongings. Arriving for the fall 1919 semester, many disillusioned soldiers returned to civilian life by removing the patches and emblems from their military jackets and trodding into class.
With just a few weeks before Christmas, the sudden artisans dove into their work. From scraps and ‘found’ materials, the Bauhaus students made toys, dolls, holiday decorations and stuffed animals….
For the more complicated work, they sought out those craftsmen (mostly women) who could cut and sew cloth. Sometimes taking payment, these Bauhäuslers tackled the labor of altering veterans’ clothing — the pants, jackets and heavy coats — sometimes constructing entirely new clothes from the old. The women found that dying the familiar, field-green or gray material could transform the cloth into something less familiar to those who’d seen and worn it on the battlefield.
As the weather turned cold and daylight hours dwindled, some of the women made woolen mittens or dark, dyed hats for extra spending cash. A painting student, Gunta Stölzl, overheard another young woman come up with the new, amazing plan:
“A Dada booth at the traditional Christmas market in Weimar.”
It was “just the ticket,” Stölzl wrote. “Everyone started to create ‘handicrafts.’ ”
With just a few weeks before Christmas, the sudden artisans dove into their work. Stölzl and others knocked on the doors of local women, who willingly donated scraps of fabric, yarn, lace and veils. Some handed over beaded handbags, leather and furs and from such treasures the Bauhaus students were able to produce toys, dolls, holiday decorations, stuffed animals and so on.
Many students joined-in, making paper things and wooden games, Stölzl remembered. When the public market opened, there were the young Bauhaus artisans among the other vendors, their Dada Christmas booth standing happily alongside the rest. Fully staffed and equipped with ornaments, toy animals, dolls, and wooden creations, the students’ fledgling business thrived at the traditional Weimar Christmas Market. They sold their work like crazy — hand-carved horses and birds and all kinds of things.
“Especially attractive were animals made of wooden roots,” Stölzl tells us, describing lively pieces “worked a little with a knife and painted very colorfully.”
Angels were especially popular, although the preferred design required linen canvas and, here, the students faced some competition for materials. School bookbinding instructor Otto Dorfner (who taught at his own longtime fine-binding business in Weimar) complained that the less-consequential Christmas angels competed for the valuable linen he used to bind books.
Other conservative school instructors also were offended by all the “childish” activity for the Christmas Market. These were the instructors of the former Weimar art academy, recently replaced by the new Bauhaus Public School. The Bauhaus School had been “brain-child” of its director, Berlin architect Walter Gropius, who was clearly thrilled at the students’ spontaneous burst of creativity and hard-driving industrialism. Gropius said it “really set this place on its head.”
Even the school’s younger teachers took part. The students’ project became an early initiative of the instructor who’d recently arrived in Weimar from Vienna, Johannes Itten.
“From now until Christmas, the old teaching model is tossed out,” Gropius proposed to his art-school faculty. “Nothing will be fabricated but children’s toys. Great enthusiasm and feverish work, all down the line.”