Gropius in Exile and the Fear of Reception

FAIN: FT-52823-04

Karen R. Koehler
Trustees of Hampshire College (Amherst, MA 01002-3359)

The German architect Walter Gropius came to the United States in 1937 as an exile from Nazi persecution. This book is a study of the material effects of his exile, as evidenced in his buildings, exhibition designs, writings, and his work as an educator. Two projects from 1938 are fore-grounded—the retrospective exhibition "The Bauhaus 1919-1928" in New York, and the design of his private residence in Massachusetts—in the context of the social, cultural and political tensions in the United States and Europe. Using previously unpublished documents, this study demonstrates that in the work he produced and the decisions he made, Gropius was justifiably in fear of his reception as a German modernist in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s.