100 Years Bauhaus Opening Festival

16 January 2019

In 2019, Germany will be celebrating the centenary of the founding of the Bauhaus, together with partners worldwide. Founded in Weimar in 1919, relocated to Dessau in 1925, and closed in Berlin under pressure from the Nazis in 1933, the school of design only existed for a total of 14 years. All the same, the legendary Bauhaus – School of Design has continued to have a lasting effect up until the present day.

The 100 Years Bauhaus opening festival kicks off nationwide celebrations for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus. It invites visitors to take a creative-experimental journey around the legendary Bauhaus stage.

Concerts, installations, puppet and straight theatre, dance and film, workshops and lecture demonstrations, games and festivities: the programme offers numerous events and formats for Bauhaus experts and novices, which enable the re-discovery of the superb historic testaments of Bauhaus, as well as the legacies and stimuli of this art form for the present and the future.

The festival programme's artistic director is Bettina Wagner-Bergelt, who has invited many artists from all over the world to Berlin to revive the spirit of Bauhaus in the tradition of Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy, Paul Klee and many others.

Oriented on Bauhauswoche 1923 (Bauhaus Week 1923) and the legendary Bauhaus Festivals, a creative atmosphere of experimentation and research, learning and teaching, joining in and thinking ahead will be ensured. Art and technology, light, colour, sound and movement and the relationship between humankind and machine will play a key role in the programme. The Virtual Reality Installation 'Das Totale Tanz Theater' is a collaboration between the Interactive Media Foundation and the internationally-acclaimed choreographer Richard Siegal and Artificial Rome. The installation explores the relationship between man and machine in a dancing manner, and lets the visitors immerse themselves in the virtual stage world of 'Das Totale Tanz Theater'.

Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is the patron of the opening festival, and will officially open the event on 16 January 2019.

Three leading Bauhaus research institutions (the Bauhaus-Archiv/Museum für Gestaltung in Berlin, the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, and the Klassik Stiftung Weimar), the Federal Government, represented by government officials for culture and media and the Federal Cultural Foundation, as well as representatives of eleven federal states, have joined to form the 'Bauhaus Verbund 2019'. See the full programme here.