By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-01-19 06:51:28 | Updated at 2025-01-19 10:18:36
3 hours ago
Germany’s far-right AfD party has aimed fire at the Bauhaus movement, just as the hallowed school of architecture and design nears its centenary milestone.
The Bauhaus movement of the 1920s, with its pioneering ethos of uniting form and function, redefined ideas about art, industrial design and building but was banned as “degenerate art” by the Nazis in 1933.
Now, as the campaign season heats up towards February 23 general elections, the Bauhaus style has been dragged into the latest culture war by the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Ahead of the 100th anniversary of the Dessau Bauhaus school in 2025, the party has put forward a motion in the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament slamming the “simplistic glorification of Bauhaus heritage”.
In a speech to the regional assembly, the AfD’s Hans-Thomas Tillschneider charged that the Bauhaus style had “inspired architectural sins of crushing ugliness”.
