Walter Gropius

He married Alma Mahler, widow of Austrian composer and conductor Gustav Mahler in 1915 whom he met in 1910 when Mahler was alive.

In 1916 their daughter Manon was born, who died young in 1935 after suffering from polio.

The couple divorced in 1920, as Alma got romantically involved with Austrian poet, novelist and playwright Franz Werfer.

He was born on May 18, 1883, in Berlin to Walter Adolph Gropius and Manon Auguste Pauline Scharnweber as their third child. His father and uncle, Martin Gropius were architects.

He studied architecture in technical colleges, first in Munich from 1903 to 1904 and then in Berlin from 1905 to 1907, though he did not receive any degree. After he completed architecture studies, he travelled for a year and visited England, Spain and Italy.

Thereafter, he joined architectural office of Peter Behrens, a co-founder of the German association ‘Deutscher Werkbund’ and an early member of modernist school of architecture. Other employees of the office included Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Dietrich Marcks.

He established his own partnership firm with Adolf Meyer in 1910. The two most successful delegations executed by the firm were ‘Fagus Werk’, a factory in the town of Alfeld, Germany from 1911 to 1913 and office and factory buildings in Cologne made for the ‘German Labour League Exhibition’ in 1914. While design of the former was highly inspired by ‘AEG Tribune’ factory designed by Peter Behrens, the latter is considered to be influenced by design of Frank Lloyd Wright, an American architect.

He joined ‘German Labour League’ (Deutscher Werkbund) in 1911 as a member.

Post war, Gropius became master of ‘Grand-Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts’ in Weimar in 1919 upon recommendation of Henry van de Velde, who had to step down from the post because of his Belgian nationality.

He gradually transformed the school into the world renowned ‘Bauhaus’ that drew distinguished and extraordinary teachers like Josef Albers, Otto Bartning, Paul Klee and László Moholy-Nagy among others.

The program of the ‘Bauhaus’ was experimental with prominence given to theoretical aspects. It strived to enhance quality as well as beauty of each building through use of industrially developed designed items.

‘Bauhaus’ had links with several European modernist design movements like ‘Neo-Plasticism’ by Piet Mondrian, ‘Constructivism’ by El Lissitzky and ‘De Stijl’ and ‘Elementarism’ by Van Doesburg.

He designed door handles in 1923 which eventually became famous and at present is considered as a significant and breakthrough design that represent applied art. It became one of the models among designs of twentieth century.

He received the Gold Medal from the ‘American Institute of Architects’ in 1959.

In 1988 the ‘Gropius House’ was enlisted in the ‘National Register of Historic Places’ and is presently open for public viewing.