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The Nazis drove Bauhaus out of town. Now the far right is waging another war
against the movement
Poll to
take place in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, where Bauhaus blossomed a century ago –
and where AfD is promising ‘patriotic culture policy’ if it wins
Deborah Cole in Dessau-Roßlau
Thu 27
Aug 2026 05.00 BST
The city
of Dessau, where the Bauhaus design
school flourished a century ago, catapulted Germany into the
modern era and revolutionised global design.
It is
also where the Nazis drove the avant garde movement out of town and attempted
to crush its utopian principles. A hundred years later, another high-stakes
culture war over its legacy is looming.
The EU’s
biggest democracy will face one of the riskiest tests of the postwar period
when Dessau’s home state of Saxony-Anhalt
goes to the polls on 6 September. In what would be a first since Adolf
Hitler’s time, a far-right party could win an absolute majority and take power
in one of the 16 Länder.
An
Alternative for Germany (AfD) party rally in Dessau, Germany. The AfD is
running first in national polls and poised to capture about 40% in
Saxony-Anhalt. Photograph: Maryam Majd/Reuters
The Alternative
für Deutschland (AfD) is running first in national polls and is poised
to capture about 40% in Saxony-Anhalt. It has widened its double-digit lead
among the state’s 1.8 million voters by homing in on the cost of living, fears
around immigration, and the whipsaw effects of deindustrialisation and
depopulation.
But the
party’s programme also
lays out a vision for Germany with Saxony-Anhalt as a foothold, in a plan oddly
fixated on Bauhaus. “The state government is running an image campaign called
‘think modern’ that seeks to derive the identity of Saxony-Anhalt from
Bauhaus,” reads one passage.
The AfD
said it is countering with “a ‘think German’ campaign” that promises a “new,
patriotic cultural policy” and an end to funding for “anti-German art and
culture”.
Bauhaus’s
blend of form and function in architecture, art and industrial design shaped
everything from Ikea style for the masses to the user-friendly elegance of
Apple products.
It was
also a buzzing hive of sexual liberation, new roles for women and international
collaboration before the Nazis drove its “degenerates” into exile.
The
director of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, Barbara Steiner, says the AfD’s
anti-Bauhaus crusade is a Trojan horse aiming for the heart of Germany’s open,
liberal society. Photograph: Dpa Picture Alliance/Alamy Stock Photo/Alamy
Live News.
In her
modest, sleek-lined office at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, director Barbara
Steiner said that much like a century ago, the AfD’s anti-Bauhaus crusade was a
Trojan horse aiming for the heart of Germany’s open, liberal society.
“There
would be a lot of people leaving the state”, if the AfD took control, said the
Austrian-born Steiner. She argued the region was underestimated by its
purported champions and their “absurd” war on a warped vision of Bauhaus.
“People
are always talking about the economic downturn and how everything’s going down
the drain, but the people here are brilliant,” she said. “I’m afraid what is
now so tenderly sprouting will be snuffed out by this rigidity and isolation.”
While her
own institution would probably face funding cuts, her bigger worries concern
the chilling effects on public debate, cooperation and innovation. “They want
cultural hegemony. That’s the really threatening thing.”
Today
Dessau-Roßlau, as the city has been known since a municipal consolidation in
2007, can seem like an open-air museum of the past 100 years’ tumult. Its
historic, deserted market square is bookended by soaring spires. But taller
still are the prefab communist-era housing blocks hulking over gutted brick
warehouses. And on nearly every lamp-post, an AfD poster hangs with the promise
“Our Year”.
The
Bauhaus Dessau, a Unesco world heritage site designed by Walter Gropius and
built between 1925 and 1926. Photograph: Axel Schmidt/Reuters
The
sprawling Bauhaus campus and a glass-and-steel museum which opened in 2019
attract tens of thousands of visitors each year. But city authorities say
tourism will never lift the economy out of the doldrums.
Unemployment
sits at 10%, against 8% across the state and 6% at the national level.
Household income in Saxony-Anhalt falls near the bottom of the German table.
With an
average age above 50, Dessau-Roßlau is one of the country’s most geriatric
cities. Its population has shrunk to 75,000 from 130,000 in 1990, the year
Germany reunified, driven by an exodus led by highly educated young women.
The
Bauhaus-influenced 1930s modernist Isokon apartment building, in Hampstead,
London. The Bauhaus movement catapulted Germany into the modern era and
revolutionised global design.
Photograph: UrbanImages/Alamy
The
13-year-old AfD has said it wants to repopulate Saxony-Anhalt using lavish
family subsidies with unclear financing, while freeing up lost potential by
“liberating” Germans from shame
over the Holocaust.
Authorities
classify the national party as suspected extremist and the Saxony-Anhalt
chapter as confirmed extremist, meaning it poses a threat to democracy.
Its
flag-bearer is Ulrich Siegmund, a telegenic regional MP with reported
ties to known neo-Nazis. Siegmund attended
an infamous meeting in November 2023 to discuss a “remigration”
plan for mass deportations.
An
election campaign billboard that shows Saxony-Anhalt premier Sven Schulze of
the Christian Democratic Union and reads: ‘Listen. Understand.
Do.’ Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
At a
candidates’ debate on Dessau’s outskirts, the mainstream parties pleaded with
voters to consider the consequences of backing the AfD. Making his pitch, state
premier, Sven Schulze, of the Christian Democratic Union, the party of
Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, did
not make a single reference to the historically
unpopular leader.
Schulze,
the only candidate with a chance of standing in the way of the AfD, has often
seemed to be campaigning against his own party, most recently attacking a
signature national pension
reform plan.
He
accused the AfD of selling snake oil on growth, jobs and borders. “Even if the
day after tomorrow all women decide they’re only there for baby-making, as some
(parties) seem to want, that won’t solve the problem,” he said. “It’s important
to be honest: we will also need people from abroad in the coming years,
particularly in the care sector and in hospitals.”
Tobias
Rausch, in the state parliament for the AfD since 2016, brushed off questions
about the legality of its calls for mass expulsions of asylum seekers. “We want
to rescue the country from politicians from the old parties and finally make
policies for the people,” he said. “We don’t just want to change things in
Saxony-Anhalt but also at the national level.”
Armin
Willingmann, a veteran Social Democrat struggling to keep Germany’s oldest
party in the regional parliament, appealed to a sense of pride in regional
accomplishments, including Bauhaus. “This is a place of exceptional cultural
significance – our global culture,” he said. “We really must be careful not to
shut the door, not to adopt Herr Rausch’s quite crude policy of isolationism.”
Undecided
voters said they appreciated local patriotism but that the politicians seemed
to be talking past economic realities.
Local
voters Ruth Schulze and Maria Karius. Photograph: Deborah Cole/The
Guardian
“If the
economy is blossoming here, why is there no money to be found anywhere?” said
Ruth Schulze, in her 60s and no relation to the CDU candidate. “I was born and
bred in Dessau and don’t want to speak ill of it – but the lack of money really
is the number one issue,” said Schulze, who runs an advertising agency she said
was struggling with overhead costs.
Teacher
Maria Karius, 40, said the far right had come to be seen as a normal part of
the political landscape as frustration with the mainstream parties festered.
Despite a
15-% drop in the Dessau crime rate last year, she said there was a
perception that public spaces weren’t safe. “Nothing changes – it’s always the
same. That’s fertile ground for the AfD.”
While the
debate’s tone often sounded resigned, back in town there were still some echoes
of Bauhaus’s revolutionary esprit.
Rima Al
Ahmad describes the shared community space she shares with other artists as a
kind of resistance against her state’s increasingly ‘notorious’
image. Photograph: Deborah Cole/The Guardian
Rima Al
Ahmad, who came to Dessau from the bigger city of Halle a decade ago to study
design, works in a shared community space for artists and creators called Vor
Ort, which translates as on site or local. It was conceived of as a “cultural
anchor” for German and international students drawn to courses rooted in
Bauhaus traditions.
“It can
be hard to find your place here if you come from outside,” she said.
On a tour
of its printmaking workshop, recording studio and lush community garden, Al
Ahmad, 32, born to a Syrian father and a German mother, described the project
as a kind of resistance against her state’s increasingly “notorious” image.
“I was
born in Saxony-Anhalt and for me, Saxony-Anhalt is home,” she said. “It has
beautiful places and great, just normal people, regardless of the far right.”
Asked
what the Bauhaus pioneers would think of Vor Ort, she smiled: “I think they’d
like that the experimental spirit is being carried forward here.”
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