THE BAUHAUS: OUT OF NOWHERE

This essay considers the Bauhaus as a product of the dynamism of postwar German society in the 1920s, rather than of a few heroic figures. Instead of focusing on how the Bauhaus arrived on the Korean Peninsula or analysing the stylistic similarities between buildings, it will investigate how the Bauhaus’ architectural ideals were reproduced in a similar manner in two Koreas during the Cold War under the influence of the United States and the Soviet Union. This article will recount the stories of the Bauhaus as significant precedents instead of focusing on the dominant origin tale.

Weimar Germany and Postwar Reconstruction on the Korean Peninsula

The Bauhaus was born in Germany at a moment in which two emotions reached their climax: despair at losing World War I and anticipation of a new era with the establishment of the first democratic republic. ▼1 From the earliest moments of the Weimar Republic, ordinary citizens as well as intellectuals thought their society needed reform. Changes were positively accepted in society, ▼2 and in this atmosphere, experimental tendencies and ideals – such as progressiveness and openness – emerged from the Bauhaus. Within the boundaries of the Bauhaus, various ideas and movements existed and thus, during the Cold War, each camp could accept the Bauhaus in accordance with each appetite: the Bauhaus symboliszed ‘freedom’ in America and ‘progress’ in the Soviet Union.

As for Germany after World War I, South and North Korea suffered from the devastation and frustration caused by a three-year war. Since then, huge amount of aid from the ‘free world’ and the communist world was offered continually, creating an atmosphere in which the destroyed country could be rebuilt as a new modern state. Due to this prevailing climate of chaos and change, and the resulting dynamics of