The Bauhaus under siege: how the AfD is courting neo-Nazis

Barbara Steiner had already sensed that the tide was turning back in the autumn of 2023. The president of the Bauhaus Foundation had presented her plans to the Regional Parliament of Saxony-Anhalt for the centenary celebrations marking the relocation of the famous school of architecture from Weimar to Dessau, scheduled for 2025. “The response was more or less favourable from everyone, but certain reservations and critical remarks set alarm bells ringing,” says the Austrian art historian in her large, square office with its white and blue walls. So she decided to take out an insurance policy – the sort that business leaders usually take out to protect themselves against potential legal action: “I sensed a revisionist tide gathering and thought I needed to take precautions.”

A few months later, in the municipal elections of June 2024, Alternative für Deutschland, the far-right nationalist party, came out on top in Dessau with 25 per cent of the vote. And in the autumn, the AfD’s regional vice-chairman, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, tabled a motion in the Landtag that confirmed Steiner’s fears. A point-blank attack on the Bauhaus, branded as the ‘Irrweg der Moderne’ (the ‘wrong path of modernism’) and accused of having ‘destroyed tradition’. “Numerous buildings in this style,” the text read, “are now considered glaring architectural errors, as their purist aesthetics and functional approach were not designed to take into account the quality of life of the inhabitants, trampling on their need for safety and comfort.” Tillschneider accused the movement of “having erased individual and regional characteristics” as well as having been “close to communism”.

The motion was rejected, but the die had been cast and the objective achieved: a heated and divisive debate has raged ever since around the Bauhaus, with a tone reminiscent of the offensive launched by the Nazis as early as the 1920s against the movement, which was deemed ‘degenerate art’, and which would lead to its banning in 1933 by the Hitler regime.

Of all the controversial battles marking the AfD’s election campaign ahead of the regional elections on 6 September in Saxony-Anhalt, the one against the Bauhaus in the name of a ‘patriotic cultural policy’, aimed at ‘strengthening German identity’ and “national pride”, is probably the most aggressive, laden with disturbing messages and also revealing of the deep-seated impulses of the far-right party. The AfD has in fact announced that, should it form the government of the former GDR state, artists and institutions would have to sign a declaration pledging “not to disparage Germany and its culture” if they wish to receive public funding. “We no longer intend to spend taxpayers’ money on promoting anti-German art,” declared Tillschneider in a speech to the Landtag, making no secret of his ambition to become the next regional Minister for Culture. When asked what he meant by anti-German art, he replied: “It is German art that does not wish to be German.”

Current polls suggest he is correct. The AfD remains stable at just over 40 per cent of the vote, almost double that of the CDU, which stands at 24 per cent, and triple that of Die Linke, which is credited with 13.5 per cent. If these figures are confirmed, they could even be enough to secure an absolute majority of seats, should no other party exceed the 5 per cent threshold required to enter Parliament. This is not an impossible scenario, given that, alongside the Liberals and the Greens, the SPD has also seen its share of the vote plummet to around 5 per cent. An AfD victory in Saxony-Anhalt – a state that claims the title of ‘the heart of Germany’ – would have profound repercussions on the entire German political landscape. It would alter the balance of power within the Bundesrat, the Chamber of Regions through which all the federal government’s strategic decisions must pass. But above all, it would increase internal pressure within the CDU for Chancellor Merz to resign early, making way for a new face. And perhaps even more importantly, according to political scientist Michael Kolkmann of the University of Halle-Wittenberg, “the AfD would use Saxony-Anhalt as a sort of testing ground, to trial measures that could then be applied in other federal states”. These include the abolition of university courses on gender, post-colonialism and, not least, the Holocaust, the remembrance of which the AfD regards as “the perpetuation of a guilt complex”.

But the Bauhaus is the first bastion to be taken. Founded by Martin Gropius in Weimar, Thuringia, in 1919, the school was intended as a possible social utopia, integrating architecture, art and design into everyday life, but above all linking form and function. Thanks to iconic figures such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer and Wassily Kandinsky, the Bauhaus has become one of the most influential movements in modern and contemporary culture, contributing to the widespread use of concrete, glass and steel as building materials, as well as geometric and minimalist forms that have transformed architecture and design worldwide.

Its relations with the political establishment, however, have been turbulent from the very beginning. As early as 1924, following the right-wing victory in the Thuringian elections, the school was expelled from Weimar and forced to relocate to Dessau. “When the students began arriving in 1925,” recalls Frank Rumpf, a CDU member of the Saxony-Anhalt Parliament and a scholar of the region’s history, “people saw them as eccentric madmen.” It was short-lived, however, lasting just seven years: in 1932, the school was also forced to leave Dessau and moved to Berlin, where it survived for only one year; in the spring of 1933, a few months after coming to power, the Nazis shut it down for good. Its leading figures were forced into exile in Europe or the United States, and this proved decisive for the spread of Bauhaus ideas throughout the world. The movement experienced a revival in East Germany in the 1970s, when the original building designed by Gropius was restored. In 1996, all the Bauhaus sites in Weimar, Dessau and Bernau were declared World Heritage Sites and included on the UNESCO list.

Historically, the school employed hundreds of local craftspeople alongside the artists, but the students came from all over the world and the Bauhaus has always had a cosmopolitan ethos. “There were people of every political persuasion,” explains Barbara Steiner, “there were communists, socialists, even some who joined the Nazi party. Others took no political stance. But the historical significance of the movement lies in the fact that it was constantly marked by internal debates over the direction it should take.” The AfD, on the other hand, “would like the centenary to be an opportunity to launch an attack on modernism”.

In fact, criticism from the far right is directed “against the one-sided glorification of the Bauhaus, regarded as the pinnacle of architecture and style”, says Gero Mielczarek, chairman of a local history association, who advises the AfD on cultural matters in Dessau. The focus is on the 5 million euros a year granted by the regional government to the Stiftung Bauhaus, which also receives municipal and federal funding. Clearly, this is not money wasted, given that the foundation, its museums and buildings attract 180,000 visitors to Dessau every year – twice the town’s population. This represents a significant windfall not only for the small German town, but for the entire eastern region, which has been affected by deindustrialisation and is now a tourist destination that last year recorded a 20 per cent increase in visitor numbers compared with 2024.

The AfD accuses the state government, in particular, of neglecting and ignoring the true historical and cultural heritage of Saxony-Anhalt. “Our history is being sacrificed for the sake of the Bauhaus golden calf,” says Mielczarek. He also denounces the cancellation of the grants earmarked for the 350th anniversary of Prince Leopold I of Anhalt-Dessau (1676–1747), whom he describes as “one of our greatest rulers, the founder of our kingdom”. Another criticism is the failure to highlight German historical figures such as Emperors Henry I and Otto I, the reformer Martin Luther, the ‘Iron Chancellor’ Otto von Bismarck and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In fact, as Frank Rumpf points out, “in 2017 we generously funded the celebrations marking the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation in Wittenberg”.

In its manifesto, the far-right party announces its intention to ‘think German’, speaks of the ‘architectural style of the Heimat’ and promises to ‘prevent meaningless blocks and other cold, traditionless geometric forms from taking over the world’. According to the AfD, the Bauhaus “avoids any sign of national roots” and is in fact “a cosmopolitan, stateless architecture”. What is most disturbing and insidious is that not only the substance of the arguments, but even the linguistic framework is identical to that used by the Nazis against the movement a century ago. Barbara Steiner points out, in fact, that the expression “Deutsch denken” (thinking German) refers to a speech by Adolf Hitler in 1938, the so-called Reichenberger Rede. Furthermore, the term “Irrweg der Moderne” (the aberration of modernity) was coined by the racial ideologist Paul Schultze-Naumburg.

The heads of some thirty cultural institutions in Saxony-Anhalt have recognised this; together with Steiner, they signed a joint declaration in April, in which they warned of the threat that a potential AfD government in the region would pose to artistic freedom and the independence of cultural institutions. “Are you sure you have the right to take political stances?” asked Laurens Nothdurft, a local councillor for Alternative für Deutschland and former member of a now-banned neo-Nazi youth organisation, publicly addressing the Foundation’s president. “Public institutions funded by taxpayers,” he added, “cannot engage in partisan politics, let alone take part in an election campaign.” "Since the AfD is making our foundation the target of a political attack, I can and must speak out," replied Barbara Steiner.

The AfD’s war against the Bauhaus continues. Behind this specific controversy, even setting aside all its hateful coded messages, the elephant in the room emerges: that of a national, sovereignist Kulturkampf – us against faceless globalism; attachment to the Heimat, the small homeland, against the feeling of being held hostage by anonymous international powers. This narrative fits perfectly with the triumphalist buildings Donald Trump is designing for Washington – pieces of an identity founded on ethnicity and blood. Denigrating the Bauhaus – and, if possible, defunding it to prevent the foundation from passing on its legacy – is the tip of the iceberg of a strategy that seeks to discredit modernity as a whole, in the name of an alternative vision of culture. That this is happening in Germany is doubly disturbing. As former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer puts it, the pro-European and Western identity that emerged after ‘Zero Hour’ and the catastrophe of the Second World War is, for the first time, under threat from the resurgence of a nationalist and Prussian identity, which has its roots in the east of the country and on which the AfD is staking its claim.

The symbolism of what is happening in Dessau encapsulates what is at stake in Saxony-Anhalt. In the words of Barbara Steiner, “if the city were one day governed by the AfD, or if the AfD were to become part of a federal government, then the Bauhaus could close again”. Just as it did in 1933. When Hitler was in power.