Chapter 5
In: Sport and the European Avant-Garde (1900-1945)
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Abstract
T. Lux Feininger’s iconic 1927 photograph Jump over the Bauhaus conveys the enthusiasm with which the Bauhaus embraced sports culture in the Weimar Republic—as a form of recreation and an artistic motif—and integrated it into school life. Founded in Weimar in 1919, the Bauhaus was among the first German art schools reformed after World War I and the first to institute sports instruction. Concerned with rejuvenating the arts and artist training and fostering a new type of well-rounded artist, it introduced holistic teaching methods that included life-reform gymnastics and increasingly modern sport. This essay explores the evolving role of sports at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau. It examines the form and purpose of athletics in the curriculum along with exemplary images by Bauhaus members that illuminate sports’ contribution to the school’s holistic pedagogical ideal and reveal a broader critique of the sports phenomenon in the Weimar Republic.