1920: Workshop fantasies? With Frank Wilhelm

In the second episode, focusing on the year 1920, we turn our attention to craft. Although we so often associate the Bauhaus with industry and steel, shortly after the school’s founding craftsmanship played a far greater role – above all the material wood.

In the founding manifesto, Walter Gropius had already proclaimed that the artist was “only an enhancement of the craftsman”. Workshop work and the ideal of craftsmanship were therefore an essential part of the programme and were intended to be closely linked with artistic practice. Accordingly, in 1920 the first house was built in collaboration with several Bauhaus workshops – entirely of wood.

Why wood was so significant, and how workshop practice at the time differs from today’s craft traditions, is explored in conversation with Frank Wilhelm, master carpenter in the stage workshop of the German National Theatre in Weimar. We visit his carpentry workshop and get to the bottom of how well the collaboration between craft and art at the Bauhaus really worked.