As it approaches its 100th anniversary, the Bauhaus is targeted by the German far right

The simplicity of the building and its practical side made it a success: the same attributes invoked today by the far-right AfD party to criticize this German artistic movement, in the run-up to legislative elections organized on February 23.

In second place in the polls with around 20% of voting intentions, the anti-immigration and pro-Russian party generally ventures little into cultural issues.

But in October, ahead of the 2025 celebrations for the centenary of the Dessau school, she proposed to the Saxony-Anhalt regional parliament a "critical examination" rather than a "simplistic glorification of the Bauhaus legacy".

A refined style, intended to be anti-bourgeois and functional rather than aesthetic: the principles of the Bauhaus, launched at the end of the First World War, infused all artistic fields, from design to painting to architecture, and earned it the label of "degenerate art" under Nazism.

"Overwhelming ugliness"

For the AfD, the "sin" of the Bauhaus was to have spread "overwhelming ugliness" in Germany, with the massive construction of gray concrete buildings in the cities of the former East Germany.

In fact, the urban planning promoted by the communist regime in power from 1953 in the East drew heavily on its precepts to build these "Plattenbau", large prefabricated buildings where the population could find low-cost accommodation.

"A vision of horror, a life in a confined space, full of prohibitions and restrictions," AfD MP Hans-Thomas Tillschneider lashed out in the parliament of Saxony-Anhalt, the region where Dessau is located.

In its motion, the party also accuses the Bauhaus of wanting to drown regional differences in a "universal aesthetic" and of carrying "an ideology close to communism".

For the cultural world, this debate is reminiscent of the Nazi crusade against the Bauhaus, banned in 1933 by the regime.

By denouncing the "madness of modernity" in its motion, the AfD is also taking up a famous phrase from the Nazi architect Paul Schultze-Naumburg.

A critical reflection on the movement? "We want that too and we are already doing it," assures Barbara Steiner, director of the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau, housed in the former university city.

Visitors will discover the history of the Bauhaus, which was founded in 1919 in Weimar before moving to Dessau to escape pressure from the Nazis, as well as its more contemporary expressions, which deal with climate change, for example.

The AfD's arguments focusing on aesthetics, she continues, are "absurd" and ignore the "progress" that the "Plattenbau" represented for the population.

"After the war, people moved into prefabricated buildings because they had hot water, a balcony, and there were no leaks in the ceiling," she says.

Political scientist Natascha Strobl doubts that the criticism of the extreme right will find support among the population because "no one is shocked by Bauhaus architecture anymore."

But, she says, this is part of a "strategy to attract attention" without taking electoral risks because "the AfD does not receive votes from the academic and cultural milieu anyway".

Troubled past

Since this controversy, visitors have expressed more curiosity about the history of the movement, says Ms. Steiner.

AfD representatives contacted by AFP declined interview requests.

The founding of Dessau, a city of 80.000 inhabitants, also deals with some of the ambiguities of the Bauhaus supporters under National Socialism, an aspect long overshadowed by its representatives.

Although nearly half of its 1.200 students left Germany after 1933, 200 joined the Nazi Party: Fritz Ertl, 30, helped design the Auschwitz concentration camp; Herbert Bayer sketched an Aryan "superman" for a Nazi propaganda poster.

"National Socialism was not just about old-fashionedness, old-fashionedness and tradition" and used modernity in a "strategic" way, explains Anke Blümm, an art historian specialising in the Bauhaus.

Barbara Steiner is campaigning for dialogue with the AfD, after discussions described as "constructive" with local executives. "But they won't stop there," she says, fearing a new charge in September, at the start of the centenary festivities.