GROPIUS, WALTER

GROPIUS, WALTER (1883–1969), architect; director of the Bauhaus.* The son of a Berlin* architect, he began his own architectural studies in 1903 at Munich's Technische Hochschule. During 1906–1907 he constructed the first buildings of his own design for an uncle in Pomerania. While working in Berlin in 1908–1910 as chief assistant to Peter Behrens,* he became friends with Ludwig Mies.* Establishing a practice in 1910 with Adolf Meyer, he designed the glass and concrete Fagus-Werk, a shoelast factory in Alfeld an der Leine, and a model factory for the 1914 Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne. His style, which combined modern building materials with an aesthetic of geometrical sobriety, was well established by this time. Gropius's Hussar Regiment was mobilized in August 1914, and he spent most of the next four years at the front. During a hard-won furlough in 1915 he married Alma Mahler, widow of Gustav Mahler. They were rarely together, and Alma's restlessness resulted in their divorce after the war. He had already been offered direction of Weimar's Kunstgewerbeschule in 1914 and was asked by the Grossherzog of Saxe-Weimar to direct both the Kunstgewerbeschule and Weimar's Kunstakademie in late 1918. When the revolution captured his imagination, he went to Berlin, where, with Bruno Taut* and the critic Adolf Behne, he founded the Arbeitsrat fu¨r Kunst.* Back in Weimar in April 1919, he consolidated the two institutions into the Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar and launched an effort to unify artistry and craftsmanship.