Editing Bauhaus (section)

=== Berlin ===
In late 1932, Mies rented a derelict factory in Berlin (Birkbusch Street 49) to use as the new Bauhaus with his own money. The students and faculty rehabilitated the building, painting the interior white. The school operated for ten months without further interference from the Nazi Party. In 1933, the [[Gestapo]] closed down the Berlin school. Mies protested the decision, eventually speaking to the head of the Gestapo, who agreed to allow the school to re-open. However, shortly after receiving a letter permitting the opening of the Bauhaus, Mies and the other faculty agreed to voluntarily shut down the school.{{when|date=July 2017}}<ref name="Mies" />

Although neither the Nazi Party nor [[Adolf Hitler]] had a cohesive architectural policy before they came to power in 1933, Nazi writers like [[Wilhelm Frick]] and [[Alfred Rosenberg]] had already labelled the Bauhaus "un-German" and criticized its modernist styles, deliberately generating public controversy over issues like flat roofs. Increasingly through the early 1930s, they characterized the Bauhaus as a front for communists and social liberals. Indeed, when Meyer was fired in 1930, a number of communist students loyal to him moved to the [[Soviet Union]].

Even before the Nazis came to power, political pressure on Bauhaus had increased. The Nazi movement, from nearly the start, denounced the Bauhaus for its "[[degenerate art]]", and the Nazi regime was determined to crack down on what it saw as the foreign, probably Jewish, influences of "cosmopolitan modernism".<ref name="Artists 2009 pp. 64-66" /> Despite Gropius's protestations that as a war veteran and a patriot his work had no subversive political intent, the Berlin Bauhaus was pressured to close in April 1933.

Under the Nazi regime, about twenty Bauhauslers are known to have been killed in prison or [[concentration camp|concentration camps]]. Some emigrated, while others adapted and participated in propaganda exhibitions and design fairs, produced photographic and graphic works such as magazine covers, movie posters, and designed furniture, carpets, household objects and even busts of [[Hitler]].<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |last=Santamaria |first=Gianni |date=2024-07-12 |title=Nazismo e design: il lato oscuro della Bauhaus |trans-title=Nazism and design: the dark side of the Bauhaus |url=https://www.avvenire.it/agora/pagine/nazi-designil-lato-oscuro-della-bauhaus |access-date=2025-05-11 |website=[[Avvenire]] |language=it}}</ref> Of 119 teaching staff {{circa|15}} emigrated between 1933 and 1938. Of the {{circa|1,250}} students who were enrolled when Hitler came to power in 1933, approximately 900 are thought to have remained in Germany. Of those, 188 joined the National Socialist Party (170 men and 18 women), 14 were part of the [[Sturmabteilung|brown shirts]], 12 joined the SS, and one was involved in the design of the [[Auschwitz concentration camp#Crematoria II–V|crematoria at Auschwitz]].<ref name=":1" /><ref>{{Cite news |last=Darwent |first=Charles |date=2024-05-06 |title=The Bauhaus Nazis: the collaborators – and worse – among the design icons |url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/article/2024/may/06/bauhaus-nazis-collaborators-auschwitz-crematoriium |access-date=2025-05-11 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}}</ref>

Mies emigrated to the United States to assume the directorship of the School of Architecture at the Armour Institute (now [[Illinois Institute of Technology]]) in Chicago, and to seek building commissions.{{Ref label|fn_1|a|a}} The simple engineering-oriented functionalism of stripped-down modernism, however, did lead to some Bauhaus influences living on in [[Nazi Germany]]. When Hitler's chief engineer, [[Fritz Todt]], began opening the new [[autobahn]]s (highways) in 1935, many of the bridges and service stations were "bold examples of modernism", and among those submitting designs was Mies van der Rohe.<ref>, Richard J Evans, ''The Third Reich in Power'', 325</ref> Emigrants did succeed, however, in spreading the concepts of the Bauhaus to other countries, including the "New Bauhaus" of Chicago:<ref>Jardi, Enric (1991). ''Paul Klee''. Rizzoli Intl Pubns, p. 22</ref>