Ise Gropius

Ise Gropius was born as Ilse Frank in Wiesbaden on 1 March 1897. After a brief stay in England, where she learned the language, she began working in Germany in 1918, first at a bookstore in Hannover and then at a newspaper in Munich. In 1923 she met Bauhaus director Walter Gropius. They married that same year. From then on, Ise Gropius was substantially involved in the success of her husband and the school of art and architecture founded by him. She was responsible for his correspondence, edited and translated his texts, managed public relations and oversaw the Friends of the Bauhaus association. She additionally documented their life at the school in a journal and two photo albums. In 1928 they left the Bauhaus. The couple moved to Berlin and travelled to the US later that year. Numerous photos of this country, its architecture and its people were created there. The precise authorship of these photographs remains unclear to this day. They are seen as a collective work by the couple. Nonetheless, because Ise Gropius increasingly began to publish her own texts and travel accounts in 1928 and one of her photos also appeared in print, there is much to indicate that a number of these photos are by her alone. The couple moved to London in 1934. Ise Gropius continued to write texts and publish work in newspapers. When Walter Gropius was invited to become a professor of architecture at Harvard in 1937, they emigrated to the US. From then on, Ise Gropius increasingly devoted her attention to her husband’s work and to spreading the Bauhaus idea in the US. She died in Lexington, Massachusetts, on 9 June 1983.