Walter Gropius

Walter Gropius was a German architect and founder of Bauhaus. Along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, he is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of "modern" architecture. In 1908, Gropius found employment with the firm of Peter Behrens, one of the first members of the utilitarian school. His fellow employees at this time included Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Dietrich Marcks.

In 1910 Gropius left the firm of Behrens, and together with fellow employee Adolf Meyer established a practice in Berlin, where he remained until the onset of World War I. In 1919, Gropius was appointed Master at the Grand-Ducal Saxon School of Arts & Crafts in Weimar. It was this academy which Gropius transformed into the world famous Bauhaus, attracting a faculty which included Paul Klee, Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, Herbet Bayer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Wassily Kandinsky. Students collaborated on the use of modern and innovative materials and mass-produced fittings, often originally intended for industrial settings, to create original furniture and buildings.

With the help of the English architect Maxwell Fry, Gropius was able to get out of Germany in 1934, on the pretext of making a temporary visit to Britain. Thus he escaped the rising anti-semitism in Germany. He lived and worked in Britain, as part of the Isokon group with Fry and others until moving to the United States in 1937.