Gestalt und Hinterhalt

Overview

In 1908 Peter Behrens recruited the young Walter Gropius in his architect’s office – but threw him out again in 1910. Gestalt und Hinterhalt [Form and Attack] places a tongue-in-cheek focus on relations among artists that orbited around the Bauhaus and Darmstadt’s Mathildenhöhe (DE): we gain insights into the love affairs of Alma Mahler and follow Herbert Bayer, who set off from Darmstadt to Weimar (DE) and soon toppled Walter Gropius’s second marriage. We bear witness to Otto Bartning’s vain attempt to invite Gropius, at once his companion and adversary, to Darmstadt in 1951. In 1961 the latter finally came to Mathildenhöhe – for the opening of the Bauhaus archive. Not surprising that encounters as a reflection of Mathildenhöhe only rarely ran harmoniously …