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Walter Gropius. Człowiek, który zbudował Bauhaus
Arcyciekawy, bogato ilustrowany portret jednego z najważniejszych architektów XX wieku, Waltera Gropiusa. Autorka, uznawana w Wielkiej Brytanii za mistrzynię biografii, śledzi nie tylko twórczość i koncepcje Gropiusa, ale też przybliża jego historię osobistą, nie mniej intrygującą od twórczości. Przy okazji otrzymujemy całą panoramę życia kulturalnego i społecznego Niemiec od końca XIX do lat sześćdziesiątych XX wieku, na tle której pojawiają się najwybitniejsze postacie sztuki i architektury tamtych czasów.
608 pages, Hardcover
First published March 5, 2019
52 people are currently reading
615 people want to read
About the author
Fiona MacCarthy
29 books39 followersFiona MacCarthy was an English biographer and cultural historian best known for her studies of 19th- and 20th-Century art and design.
MacCarthy began her career on The Guardian in 1963 initially as an assistant to the women's editor Mary Stott. She was appointed as the newspaper's design correspondent, working as a features writer and columnist, sometimes using a pseudonymous byline to avoid two articles appearing in the same issue. She left The Guardian in 1969, briefly becoming women's editor of the London Evening Standard before settling in Sheffield.
She later became a biographer and critic. She came to wider attention as a biographer with a once-controversial study of the Roman Catholic craftsman and sculptor Eric Gill, first published in 1989. MacCarthy is known for her arts essays and reviews, which appeared in The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Review of Books. She contributed to TV and radio arts programmes.
MacCarthy began her career on The Guardian in 1963 initially as an assistant to the women's editor Mary Stott. She was appointed as the newspaper's design correspondent, working as a features writer and columnist, sometimes using a pseudonymous byline to avoid two articles appearing in the same issue. She left The Guardian in 1969, briefly becoming women's editor of the London Evening Standard before settling in Sheffield.
She later became a biographer and critic. She came to wider attention as a biographer with a once-controversial study of the Roman Catholic craftsman and sculptor Eric Gill, first published in 1989. MacCarthy is known for her arts essays and reviews, which appeared in The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Review of Books. She contributed to TV and radio arts programmes.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
March 8, 2019
From BBC radio 4 - Book of the week:
Eleanor Bron reads Fiona McCarthy’s biography of the Bauhaus founder, Walter Gropius.
Gropius was a man of extraordinary charisma. For more than twenty years, from 1910 to 1930, he was at the very centre of European modern art and design. His buildings are still strikingly experimental, his influence on post-war architecture in America and internationally was enormous. As the founder and director of the Bauhaus, he invented a form of creative education that influenced art schools worldwide. But the Bauhaus was more than an art school - it was the birth of a whole new philosophy of art.
The Bauhaus stood for delight, experiment and creative freedom. Gropius gathered talents, including Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, into an art school that became an alternative way of life. Once Hitler came to power in 1933, Gropius' situation became increasingly untenable. The Nazis opposed everything the Bauhaus stood for. Gropius' beliefs and his affiliations left him little choice but to leave Germany. His story is one of exile in a century of buffeting and conflict.
In this entertaining biography, Fiona MacCarthy argues that Walter Gropius's visionary ideas still influence the way we live, work, and think today.
Episode 1:
Walter Gropius begins to develop his vision for a new modern architecture. Through his first major commission, the Fagus shoe factory, he creates a “palace of beauty” for workers, using glass in an entirely new way so that the building appears to float in space. He also meets Alma Mahler, wife of the famous composer Gustav Mahler. The first evening they meet, they fall madly in love, and their affair, passionate and tortured, will become a defining influence in his life.
Reader: Eleanor Bron
Producer: Elizabeth Burke
Executive Producer: Joanne Rowntree
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000...
Eleanor Bron reads Fiona McCarthy’s biography of the Bauhaus founder, Walter Gropius.
Gropius was a man of extraordinary charisma. For more than twenty years, from 1910 to 1930, he was at the very centre of European modern art and design. His buildings are still strikingly experimental, his influence on post-war architecture in America and internationally was enormous. As the founder and director of the Bauhaus, he invented a form of creative education that influenced art schools worldwide. But the Bauhaus was more than an art school - it was the birth of a whole new philosophy of art.
The Bauhaus stood for delight, experiment and creative freedom. Gropius gathered talents, including Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, into an art school that became an alternative way of life. Once Hitler came to power in 1933, Gropius' situation became increasingly untenable. The Nazis opposed everything the Bauhaus stood for. Gropius' beliefs and his affiliations left him little choice but to leave Germany. His story is one of exile in a century of buffeting and conflict.
In this entertaining biography, Fiona MacCarthy argues that Walter Gropius's visionary ideas still influence the way we live, work, and think today.
Episode 1:
Walter Gropius begins to develop his vision for a new modern architecture. Through his first major commission, the Fagus shoe factory, he creates a “palace of beauty” for workers, using glass in an entirely new way so that the building appears to float in space. He also meets Alma Mahler, wife of the famous composer Gustav Mahler. The first evening they meet, they fall madly in love, and their affair, passionate and tortured, will become a defining influence in his life.
Reader: Eleanor Bron
Producer: Elizabeth Burke
Executive Producer: Joanne Rowntree
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000...
January 10, 2022
Bardziej 3,75. Za dużo o związkach Gropiusa, za mało o budynkach. Za to o samej idei Bauhausu było w sam raz.
July 26, 2021
Enjoyable and sympathetic account of Gropius, that has no truck with post-70s revisionisms. As you'd expect, McCarthy provides the torrid goods on Alma.
October 4, 2024
A sweeping life of a man who was something of a legend in his time to, just about, outliving his time. Gropius was a product of that slice of the pre-1914 "Middle" European demographic that valued culture so much as to be their actual religion and MacCarthy's main achievement is to put the man back into his context. If nothing else, one has to conclude it would have been better for Gropius not to have not crossed paths with that force of chaos known as Alma Mahler. Still, while one might wonder if Gropius was disappointed that he had not built more buildings, or fathered more children, that his practical dying words were "why should I ask for more of life" (when offered extreme medical measures towards the end) is an effective epithet for a man who dodged more than his share of bullets (many of them being the real kind), and knew it. That's another thing; it's perfectly viable to think of Gropius as a man of action from his service in the Great War.
Originally written: June 20, 2020.
Originally written: June 20, 2020.
May 17, 2023
Piękna historia twórcy Bauhaus, ukazana podczas wydarzeń historycznych od strony Niemca oraz emigranta. Bardzo mi brakowało zdjęć.
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October 17, 2024As an amateur pencil draftsman, I've loved and gained valuable insight and inspiration from MacCarthy's previous bios of British designers and artists Wm Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, and Eric Gill. She was probably the first biographer who didn't shy away from mentioning the socially controversial aspects of her subjects, not in a way that was intended to cancel them, but rather to demystify what a creative genius is like. I did not realize she had passed in 2020, and was saddened that there wouldn't be any more of her writing for me to savor.
Her Gropius bio is probably her last work. It doesn't quite have the appeal of her other books. Part of it could be that architecture is much too large-scale an endeavor for me to try, however clumsily, my own hand at, so it was tough to get a feel for what made Gropius tick. Part of it could be that Gropius is a more modern individual than her usual subjects (she actually met him, briefly). Still, I noticed a tiredness to this book that wasn't in her other bios, and I daresay it was a slog to finish it, for me at least. I don't know if an architecture aficionado might have gotten more out of this book.
Her Gropius bio is probably her last work. It doesn't quite have the appeal of her other books. Part of it could be that architecture is much too large-scale an endeavor for me to try, however clumsily, my own hand at, so it was tough to get a feel for what made Gropius tick. Part of it could be that Gropius is a more modern individual than her usual subjects (she actually met him, briefly). Still, I noticed a tiredness to this book that wasn't in her other bios, and I daresay it was a slog to finish it, for me at least. I don't know if an architecture aficionado might have gotten more out of this book.
April 20, 2025
Cried multiple times and spilled coffee on my computer while reading….nevertheless I persisted
August 12, 2025
Pisane z dużą czułością dla bohatera. Oczko niżej, tylko za bardzo ubogi materiał zdjęciowy.
May 17, 2025
Gropius jest drugoplanową postacią własnej biografii.
Sięgnąłem po ten tytuł z chęcią głębszego poznania świata wewnętrznego Gropiusa. Niestety, książka nie spełniła oczekiwań; być może jednak bezpodstawnych. Postać Gropiusa wywarła na mnie wielkie wrażenie, gdy przeczytałem krótki [prawie że] bukiecik poświęcony Bauhausowi. Idee, które przyświecały Gropiusowi głęboko ze mną rezonowały. Miałem apetyt na więcej.
Liczyłem więc, że ta książka przybliży mi rozumowanie jednego z najwybitniejszych architektów modernizmu; że dogłębnie zbada kluczowe motywy filozofii Gropiusa; że pokaże jego dzieła w pełnej krasie.
Zamiast tego - chcąc, nie chcąc - poznałem cały światek kulturowy Republiki Weimarskiej: zaczynając od Mahlerów, przez Moholy'ego-Nagy'ego, Breuera i Bayera, po liczne inne postacie, których imion już nie przywołam. Gropius gubi się na ich tle. Staje się tylko obiektywem, przez który autorka przedstawia otaczający go świat. Nie mówię, że powinno być dokładnie na odwrót, jednak lektura pozostawiła u mnie zdecydowany niedosyt pod kątem znajomości Gropiusa.
Z innej strony, doszukuję się w tym pewnego plusa. A mianowicie: przybliżyłem sobie ogólny obraz ówczesnej epoki, nawet jeśli i zaszło to kosztem Waltera. Odkryłem dla siebie innych genialnych architektów, malarzy, fotografów i kompozytorów.
Sięgnąłem po ten tytuł z chęcią głębszego poznania świata wewnętrznego Gropiusa. Niestety, książka nie spełniła oczekiwań; być może jednak bezpodstawnych. Postać Gropiusa wywarła na mnie wielkie wrażenie, gdy przeczytałem krótki [prawie że] bukiecik poświęcony Bauhausowi. Idee, które przyświecały Gropiusowi głęboko ze mną rezonowały. Miałem apetyt na więcej.
Liczyłem więc, że ta książka przybliży mi rozumowanie jednego z najwybitniejszych architektów modernizmu; że dogłębnie zbada kluczowe motywy filozofii Gropiusa; że pokaże jego dzieła w pełnej krasie.
Zamiast tego - chcąc, nie chcąc - poznałem cały światek kulturowy Republiki Weimarskiej: zaczynając od Mahlerów, przez Moholy'ego-Nagy'ego, Breuera i Bayera, po liczne inne postacie, których imion już nie przywołam. Gropius gubi się na ich tle. Staje się tylko obiektywem, przez który autorka przedstawia otaczający go świat. Nie mówię, że powinno być dokładnie na odwrót, jednak lektura pozostawiła u mnie zdecydowany niedosyt pod kątem znajomości Gropiusa.
Z innej strony, doszukuję się w tym pewnego plusa. A mianowicie: przybliżyłem sobie ogólny obraz ówczesnej epoki, nawet jeśli i zaszło to kosztem Waltera. Odkryłem dla siebie innych genialnych architektów, malarzy, fotografów i kompozytorów.
May 16, 2021
Fiona MacCarthy has clearly put a good deal of research gone into this, and I feel better-versed in Gropius' migrations from Germany to England to USA; in the histories and personalities of the Bauhaus in its various manifestations; and very much better informed in relation to Walter Gropius' emotional journey and love life.
I began the book nervous: an early passage left me with the impression that there was to be a degree of apologism for Gropius' behaviour and affiliations in relation to the Nazi regime. And, by the end of the work, I still feel uncomfortable about this: there do seem to be some double standards applied. Alma Mahler, married to a Jew, is described straightforwardly as anti-semitic; comments made by Gropius, ahead of the Nazi regime, and which are incontrovertibly anti-semitic are forgiven as being a product of their time - and those views glossed over, ignored, forgiven, later in the book, without any clear demonstration of Gropius acknowledging a change in his underpinning values.
The background of somewhat bohemian, decadent, perhaps subversive approaches to love and life - most especially the love: some complicated stories tangled up in here - are fun (if firmly rooted, in their expression, in the confidence which comes with a good deal of privilege and entitlement), and contrast in a rather endearing way with the somewhat austere figure Gropius otherwise seems to cut.
I suspect we hear more about the part and contribution of the women - as students, teachers, lovers, partners and colleagues - than we might in other works on either Gropius or the Bauhaus. And for that, hurrah!
The biography is perhaps a little longer than it needs to be, and I am left (this is no bad thing) with a rather muddled sense of Gropius. The concluding words seem to want to steer us to Gropius the philosopher (and I could feel them building, inexorably, to the comparison with William Morris); what I'd read left me assessing Gropius' significance as an educator, a community-builder - and that his vision in bringing people together to explore, to understand and to dare the wider picture rather outweighed his importance as an architect.
Oh, and I do really rate that teapot! Wonder how it pours?
I began the book nervous: an early passage left me with the impression that there was to be a degree of apologism for Gropius' behaviour and affiliations in relation to the Nazi regime. And, by the end of the work, I still feel uncomfortable about this: there do seem to be some double standards applied. Alma Mahler, married to a Jew, is described straightforwardly as anti-semitic; comments made by Gropius, ahead of the Nazi regime, and which are incontrovertibly anti-semitic are forgiven as being a product of their time - and those views glossed over, ignored, forgiven, later in the book, without any clear demonstration of Gropius acknowledging a change in his underpinning values.
The background of somewhat bohemian, decadent, perhaps subversive approaches to love and life - most especially the love: some complicated stories tangled up in here - are fun (if firmly rooted, in their expression, in the confidence which comes with a good deal of privilege and entitlement), and contrast in a rather endearing way with the somewhat austere figure Gropius otherwise seems to cut.
I suspect we hear more about the part and contribution of the women - as students, teachers, lovers, partners and colleagues - than we might in other works on either Gropius or the Bauhaus. And for that, hurrah!
The biography is perhaps a little longer than it needs to be, and I am left (this is no bad thing) with a rather muddled sense of Gropius. The concluding words seem to want to steer us to Gropius the philosopher (and I could feel them building, inexorably, to the comparison with William Morris); what I'd read left me assessing Gropius' significance as an educator, a community-builder - and that his vision in bringing people together to explore, to understand and to dare the wider picture rather outweighed his importance as an architect.
Oh, and I do really rate that teapot! Wonder how it pours?
January 17, 2021
Very detailed and easy to read history of Walter Gropius's life. Great insight into his early experiences in WWI, where he was awarded medals for bravery, and that out of these horrors grew the idea of the bauhaus. In his early career he worked with Peter Behrens and even met Gaudi. During this phase he developed thoughts around the rights of workers to beauty 'art for the people that everyone could share'. This idealistic theme seemed to underpin his philosphy together with the necessity for craft in art, the prime source of creative imagination, and technological progress. These grew into the Bauhaus, which he thought of as akin to medieval stonemason's guild. I was left with a real sense of his character, the most striking story was of his affair with Mahler's wife, Alma. His desire to 'get the emotional uper hand' led him to writing directly to Mahler and meeting him to prounouce the betrayal. Prior to the rise of the Nazis was a golden period when industrial revolution seemed to be taking hold with the critical mass of creatives starting to disperse from Paris to Berlin. The storeys of the Weimar and Dessau Bauhaus move painted a colourful picture of the many characters involved. But the most gripping part of the book was the experiences as the Nazis started to rise and then we moved to London hearing about devastating storeys second hand, whilst head of the Harvard Design School. Overall incredibly well researched, an enjoyable book to read.
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June 15, 2023Czyta się lekko i przyjemnie, co nie jest wcale zarzutem. 😉 z tej lekkości wyłania się obraz przedwojennego, a dokładniej powojennego Berlina. Opowieść o człowieku niezłomnym. Tak rysuje sylwetkę Gropiusa autorka. Mimo objętości tekstu mam wrażenie że coś umyka.
Nie jest to pozycja o architekturze, która jest zdecydowanie w tle i tłem pozostaje. Chociaż parokrotnie wychodzi na plan pierwszy. I tu największy minus. Duży minus. Brak zdjęć. Nikt nie spodziewa się w biografii edytoriali każdego budynku czy ich planów. Mile by było zamieszczenie przynajmniej jednego zdjęcia zgodnie z treścią.
Tym bardziej gdy w podziękowaniu autorki czytamy o zdjęciach kolorowych w wydaniu oryginału.
Rozumiem że podczas lektury wspomaganie internetem jest już codziennością, ale czytając w papierze chciałoby się oczy odrywać od strony jak najrzadziej.
Nie jest to pozycja o architekturze, która jest zdecydowanie w tle i tłem pozostaje. Chociaż parokrotnie wychodzi na plan pierwszy. I tu największy minus. Duży minus. Brak zdjęć. Nikt nie spodziewa się w biografii edytoriali każdego budynku czy ich planów. Mile by było zamieszczenie przynajmniej jednego zdjęcia zgodnie z treścią.
Tym bardziej gdy w podziękowaniu autorki czytamy o zdjęciach kolorowych w wydaniu oryginału.
Rozumiem że podczas lektury wspomaganie internetem jest już codziennością, ale czytając w papierze chciałoby się oczy odrywać od strony jak najrzadziej.
August 31, 2020
I checked this out from the library after visiting Gropius House in Lincoln, MA on July 25, 2020. I wanted to know more about his second wife Ise and his daughter Ati. I had forgotten he was married to Alma Mahler and had a daughter with her. Sad to learn she died of polio; sadder that Alma kept them separated. Their courtship, conducted during her engagement, shocked a little. The fact that she didn't make her decision to choose Gropius until the night before her wedding made me feel for her fiance. I appreciate her creative life and hope that being Mrs. Bauhaus was truly a fulfillment and not a sublimation.
January 31, 2024
Not a bad biography per se, but it reads more like an attempt by the author to demonstrate her knowledge of architecture than an actual biography. This is no Isaacson biography. If you do not have prior architectural knowledge, the book can be rather confusing as the author frequently fails to describe the historical significance let alone relevance of each name seemingly randomly sprinkled throughout the book.
June 23, 2024
3.5? czegoś mi brakowało - na pewno zdjęć (+według podziękowań w oryginale są one kolorowe) budynków, bo było ich zdecydowanie za mało. to bardziej książka o kobietach i architekturze, niż o samym gropiusie, bo tak naprawdę nadal czuję, że nie poznałam w pełni jego osoby (mimo dobrego researchu autorki)
June 17, 2019
Fascination biography of a towering figure of architectural theory and design that delves deep into his personal life.
July 31, 2020
Fantastic!
November 11, 2021
Excellent!
September 29, 2022
An exhaustive biography. Retells with much richness the life of Gropius and Bauhaus.
February 25, 2023
Niedosyt pozostawia liczba zdjęć - jest ich zdecydowanie za mało.
Currently reading
May 30, 2023p. 420
November 5, 2023
Awesome biography. Very detailed, very well researched and very well written.
September 29, 2024
Well written biography Gropius that covers the beginnings and end of the German Bauhaus school, AND the Bauhaus migration to the USA.
December 16, 2025
Więcej architektury przydałoby się - kosztem mniejszej ilości intymnych relacji z kobietami, skoro ma to być o człowieku, który zbudował Bauhaus - a nie o człowieku, który sypiał z mężatkami.
February 1, 2021
This was a good book. It was interesting learning more about the Bauhaus and how that came about. I wished there was more focus and research on the work that Gropius did in Boston and indeed USA as a whole. I feel like those chapters were thin, rushed. Overall, I got a better sense of the man, Gropius. There just always seemed to be something lacking. I hate to say that about such a long work, but it is true. It took me a couple years of reading it on and off to finish it. It is a decent read.
March 31, 2025
I wish I could give it 10 stars
What an epic, interesting and important biography! I have always been Bauhaus curious and this book satisfies my interest in this artistic institution, as well as the man who created it. It was intriguing to picture Gropius, Kandinsky and Klee all there at the beginning. Gropius was first and foremost an architect, so this is also a great primer on architecture, complete with his relationships with other great architects. Very well written. Highly recommended.
What an epic, interesting and important biography! I have always been Bauhaus curious and this book satisfies my interest in this artistic institution, as well as the man who created it. It was intriguing to picture Gropius, Kandinsky and Klee all there at the beginning. Gropius was first and foremost an architect, so this is also a great primer on architecture, complete with his relationships with other great architects. Very well written. Highly recommended.
March 20, 2019
An interesting peak in to the life of this 'artist' and his surrounding friends and family - a life which I suspect no longer exists.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews