The spirit of Bauhaus at Burg university

By Ulrich Texter

The spirit of Bauhaus lives on: in Tel Aviv, Chicago, New York or at the Ulm School of Design, even after the "Laboratory of Modernity" became history following the National Socialists' closing of Bauhaus in 1933. Despite the closure, the GDR continued to rely on the school’s ideas at the University of Art and Design in Halle, as HABA designer Ines Frömelt explains.

Spielwarenmesse: Ms Frömelt, did the “Bauhaus style” play a role during your training as a toy designer at Burg Giebichenstein University?

Ines Frömelt: The Burg university can definitely be regarded as a Bauhaus location in the intellectual sense. After the Weimar Bauhaus was forced to close and moved to Dessau, many Bauhaus representatives, including Gerhard Marcks and Marguerite Friedländer, went to Halle. Bauhaus products and the products from the Burg university broke new ground by uniting art, craft and design, and found their way into industrial serial production.

Spielwarenmesse: How did the spirit of Bauhaus inspire teaching in Halle?

Ines Frömelt: In the 1960s, for example, Lothar Zitzmann developed an artistic core curriculum and design rules with a contemporary impact, which I as a student internalised with enthusiasm and which continue to influence my work to this day. This demonstrates that the core curriculum at Burg university was very similar to the Bauhaus preliminary course. Even training in the field of toy and learning material design focused on functionality, turning its back on kitsch and clichés. At the same time, attention was placed on emotional and illustrative aspects.

Spielwarenmesse: What influence does the legendary school of architecture, art and design have on design in general today?

Ines Frömelt:  Bauhaus was also described as an experimental laboratory for the creation of a new society, for the improvement of everyday life and the merging of art and technology for serial mass production. This courageous avant-garde movement from Germany with its completely new way of thinking is admired, but also criticised. It is essential to reinterpret the various approaches in keeping with our time.

Spielwarenmesse: And does Bauhaus also influence your work? To look at your new 3D tiles you might think that Bauhaus is back!
 

Ines Frömelt: The design has evolved, but a number of Bauhaus ideas and design principles are still of interest. The game also deals with the basics of elements and materials, a first time gripping and building, laying, arranging, stacking, etc. Stacking relatively simple bricks is always a challenge for small children. The 3D tile games are intended to encourage experimentation. Whether its the Spielgabe sets by Friedrich Fröbel, the Bauspielschiff set by Alma Siedhoff-Buscher or simple dice – there is always the question, the challenge, the playful approach, the things you can do with the blocks.

About the author

Ulrich Texter made writing his profession after studying psychology and philosophy at the FU Berlin. He has a preference for literature, jazz music and design. For more than 20 years, he has accompanied the toy industry as editor-in-chief of the trade magazine planet toys. You can sense his penchant for design when he looks at small gems of the toy industry. True to the motto "We can also do things differently", he creates small cultural oases in Bad Iburg as an honorary cultural impresario with the Ostenfelder Leseherbst and the children's literature prize "Schlossgeschichten".