Bauhaus building, Dessau, Germany
Financial woes and political opposition forced the school to move from Weimar to Dessau in 1925. The school entered its most creative phase in Dessau where Gropius brought together a faculty of celebrated artists and craftspeople that included Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Marcel Breuer. The political situation in Germany at this time was rapidly changing with the rise of the Nazi Party. The government closed the Bauhaus in 1932 and Gropius, who had left the school in 1928 to open a private practice in Berlin, fell into disfavor of the Third Reich. They described his work as "Communist." Gropius submitted designs for government-funded projects that were consistently rejected. There was little work in Germany for anyone not closely aligned with the government. In 1934, the German government granted Gropius's request to work temporarily in London. He, his wife Ise, and their daughter Ati remained there for two and a half years. Gropius entered into partnership with Maxwell Fry, a leading exponent of modern architecture in England. While in London, the Dean of Harvard's Graduate School of Design, Joseph Hudnut, visited Gropius and offered him a teaching position. Harvard, anxious to revitalize the teaching of architecture and change their curriculum from the Beaux-Arts tradition, pursued Gropius. Yet only when Harvard agreed to allow him to build a private architectural practice in addition to his teaching did Gropius accept the offer. However, first Gropius had to persuade the German government to allow him to transfer to the United States. The government reluctantly agreed and allowed Gropius to return to Germany to collect his personal belongings. In return, the Propaganda Ministry advertised that Harvard had appointed a German citizen, for the first time, to a traditional professorship and in such a role would serve Germany as an exemplary model of its greatness.
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