Famous artists are not easy themes in movies and TV series, as it may seem at first glance. The great personalities in the history of art have their fans who have opinions that are hard to change and dangerously to contradict about the lives and the personalities of their idols. Art historians and experts check the authenticity of biographical details and the compatibility of the characters created on the screen with what is known about the lives or works of artists. It is even more difficult to bring to the screen an entire artistic movement and the institution that gave birth to it. This ambitious venture was undertaken by German director and co-writer Lars Kraume who created the 2019 mini-series ‘Bauhaus – A New Era‘ (in German ‘Die Neue Zeit‘). I found the result a little surprising. Lars Kraume and his team managed to bring to the screen a detailed and truthful description of the political and social context in which Bauhaus was born in a Germany just out of the First World War and also imagined a beautiful love story which is artistically credible, even if challenged by rigorous researchers. However, the series says less about the movement that would revolutionize art and architecture, creating a fusion between industrial and aesthetic that underlies what we call design today. But ultimately, this is a fictional series, not a documentary, so we have plenty of reasons to watch ‘Bauhaus – A New Era‘ as mere fans of quality television.
The series covers the first period in the history of the art school and the Bauhaus art movement, the period between 1919 and 1925, when the institution was based in Weimar. Walter Gropius (played by August Diehl) sets up here, with the support of a liberal minister of culture, an institution that aims to represent the progressive and avant-garde currents of German culture, opening it to the rest of the world, while combining artistic and social ideals: life dedicated to creation, art and crafts for the masses, the rejection of rigid conventions and traditions. As it appears in the film, the city of Weimar represents the effervescence but also the social and political contradictions of a war-torn Germany, in which extremisms were fighting each other and in which conservatism tried to limit or even annihilate the avant-garde. This, in turn, was segmented between the followers of expressionism, which had already manifested itself in the decades before the First World War, and the abstract, minimalist, industrialized art promoted by Gropius. Much of the film, however, focuses on the largely unconsumed love story between the school principal and the movement leader and one of his students, Dörte Helm (played by Anna Maria Mühe). She is a minor artist, coming from a conservative family, who will gradually get rid of prejudices and will simultaneously become the opponent and stimulator of the cautious Gropius, but also his muse and his sentimental interest. This connection, probably fictitious, becomes the main focus of the action, and provides the motivation for many of the decisions attributed to Gropius, both as a school principal and as an artist and architect. The story is told through flashbacks, using the pretext of an interview that the architect, who became famous and settled in the United States, gives to the Vanity Fair magazine many decades later. The reporter is more interested in the romantic aspects than in art, design, and architecture, and this interest is also transferred to the narrative structure of the series.
The narrative captures some of the main aspects of Germany immediately after the defeat in World War I, with the contradictions that would lead within the next 14 years to the collapse of democracy and the rise of Nazism. The creative effervescence of the arts and crafts school is also very well captured, as are the difficulties and contradictions between the liberal and the institutionally conservative artistic vision, in aspects such as equal access to courses by women. August Diehl and Anna Maria Mühe play the two main roles excellently, describing a teacher-student relationship that was morally problematic even a century ago, but which acquires significance and is full of emotion in the context of the story. There are many other significant acting roles, but the one I do not want to leave out is Sven Schelker‘s role as the esoteric professor Johannes Iten, Gropius’ deputy in the first period of the Bauhaus. The movement sought to stay out of politics, to become a creative field and a model of artistic and social progress in a conflict-ridden Germany. As an institution, it is clear that it has failed. This can be seen in the series, which covers the first stage of its history, and we know that the school partially changed its direction after Walter Gropius left it in 1928 and closed in 1933, after the Nazis came to power. Its main promoters have emigrated, spread their ideas and created art, crafts and architecture around the world. The style and design survived the school and influenced the architecture and art of the next century. The series ‘Bauhaus – A New Era‘ presents a view of the beginnings of the movement, is well made and beautifully acted and, even if it does not have the rigor of a documentary, it is worth watching.