Walter Gropius: Exile Journal

By Michael Holland

Walter Gropius
England April 1934

Home, a place I shall never return. I look now to the East,
across the channel in fear and where I once saw hope for man,
I see doom and I am glad to be alone when the time comes.
Others of my homeland were prone to compromise, and
to say things were not so bad, only some parts of our culture,
some of the elements of our culture were keeping us down, and
they were being dealt with. One must ask, ‘is it ok, if you do
anything they don’t like they make you and your family’s life
hell, to follow them blind?’ No one asks. The ones who ask
these questions are weeded out, its mad, baffling, and makes
me tired and angry. I thought about this and it was why I finally
decided to leave. I couldn’t run Bauhaus, we moved, and still
they raided us, calling us ‘jew-lover’ and looking for political
dissidents. I hope it was the right decision but I am not sure.
I could have helped friends and family. Instead I opted to
abandon them and for this I cannot forgive myself.

I write this tonight in order to sort out my clouded mind
and try to stay partly sane, partly straight on the course of my
work and my life. My friends deferred to me saying, Walter,
take care of yourself, they see a famous man, a war hero, and
say that I can do whatever I want so I do not feel so bad. Still
I am troubled and though I would like to forego looking at why
and how I must because my days are troubled and I know not
where to go from here, how to proceed with living and teaching
modernism.

First, because my friends and loved ones defer to me as
I learned first in the Army that means I show as an example
to them especially, and above all they see what I do as correct.
For me to stay, and help would be good, many people count on
me, and they count on me as a teacher and a builder. But, when
I left I left because I could, I am a famous and prominent figure
in Germany, I used this to my advantage to escape the craziness
where most people lacked the will to plot escape, to abandon
friends or family, I am simply rich and famous enough to do so.
This burdens me as well, and with the Weimar if they don’t like
you, it doesn’t matter if you are famous and productive, even
a war hero like myself. They stop at nothing.

I took advantage and looked out for myself over everyone
else, and was secreted to Italy. There is no escaping this simple
fact of my existence now. Everyone here in England is sympathetic
and says Hitler is a madman, and things are crazy enough, some
that do not know me think I am a German spy! I want only
to be let to live. I find when I am, all my problems come over
me in a wave. I write this to survive that and understand my
confusion and my fears.

As all this displacement and estrangement goes on in my
heart my head and my past, life happens around me. I have
been giving lecture every week for almost a year. The faces
of the young girls are sad and bereft of the brightness that
makes a man marvel how ever he was unhappy but I understand
that, in Germany there are many bright faces on young people,
but not at University.

Architecture maybe drew me back from it, made my hands
and eyes and mind busy again, and I hope it serves as an
example for the young people in my classes. Where they have
heard so much about the Nazis on the radios and seen news clips
at the movies of Hitler’s speeches they are somewhat shocked
to see my manner and hear me speak my rough English. I can
deal with that fine, they are smart and busy students, I am
always happy to teach inquisitive minds and theirs are doubly
so for my foreign features and manner.

It challenges me also. I must continue my work for my
country and humanity everywhere besides this muck, war
for no reason but Nationalism, macho man and daring other
countries to find out what they will do. It is primitive, a young
man’s game, and there is no future in it. I believe it now more
than ever. When function is forgotten by the designer, in my
experience... one must return to the simplest parts of their task.
Materials, surroundings, and the methods of foundation and
framing in the hands of a skilled architect, to merge with an
exterior for the viewer to see and feel something, is where
design started and where it must stay. We have ventured far
from this course. A dark day for Europe. A long road lies ahead.
I must look forwards as well, and work as hard as ever, else
I will fall into being a sour unhappy depressed estranged buffoon,
Ise reminds me of this, but I know it also, after pouring
my heart and mind out on this page where if my coworkers and
students saw, would terrify me, but they know. My face hides
nothing.

Walter

England November 1935

Now it’s Friday evening and it is raining, I see outside all
the streetlights in a row flickering over puddles on the cobblestone
walks and paved road and I am alone with no matches
and this feeling of loneliness and heartache. The sky is overcast
and black, my window is wet and no one is here but me, the
sound of my pen scrawling on this paper and the tap-tapping
of raindrops on my roof and my wife’s gentle snore, I am a
romantic at the last. I wonder who or what put me in this place,
the raindrops tell me it could not have been me, my hearts’
deliberate thud-thud reminds me of all I need, and nothing at
once, across the dark glass that does not reflect my long stare
for want of light. I can hardly see the page but I remember.

In this damn land it never ceases to rain, or it is foggy and
cold so I know I am alone now thinking about my country
I don’t know, and my home I don’t belong. When my work
is finished, as it is now, I have felt agitated, useless, even,
and smoke and listen to the radio but tonight I am heartsick, and
I have no matches. I am thankful for this night away from the Nazi
party, those bastards do not understand this simple picture, me here,
doing nothing. The reason is simply this: there is nothing to be done.

School continues slowly and sadly, well enough for my tastes,
why else would one come to learn architecture than to be an observer
first? Sadly, is more than usual, but slowly is perfectly fine, I cannot
wish for better students. Though I am strange to them they respect
me mostly. I cannot say what it would be like, the shoe on the other
foot, a Brit teaching in Germany now would not be respected.
The situation is strange indeed.

Likely, they would not be let into the country, except on business
with the state. How ridiculous! Who in Germany decided that it
should be so, and when? I live in England without fear now, under no
one’s control, and it is fine, I am a famous designer of buildings! But
Germany wouldn’t allow a famous building designer from England to
teach them? Why? If they had a famous style it would simply be copied
anyway by the architects in Germany. It doesn’t matter, I am not
a Weimar because people bought my designs and attended my school.
I could leave and I did.

Nights of rain and solitude, watching quietly the scene outside
unfold without event reminds me of the costs of this brutal,
senseless war in Germany, and escaping it. To give up
this night, in fear of loss, or to see your own sadness in past
and failure or loss, is necessary and real to me in this moment,
and I know it cannot be so in a Fascist state, I have seen the
price of Nationalism, and the Fatherland has not prepared for
this side, it cannot be jailed, it cannot be recorded, it may not
be imprisoned or checked at the border. It cannot be railed
against in speeches or made known as an enemy of the state
in newsreels. Tonight in England it survives as I have and I see it
in now nearly inky blackness above the street and its lamps and
I know it is not mine again, I had to leave it all in Germany.

This makes me feel numb, useless and helpless as much as
anything, which I like. Tomorrow is only a few hours away
and I will have matches again and will be asleep at this hour.
What I dream may become my thoughts tonight more fully, for
they are the thoughts of a younger me confused and awakened
tonight, a lonely Friday, before I go back to bed with my wife who
hates me smoking, I do not want to irk her.

Aside of that a dream tomorrow of work, work, always work
meets me as soon as I close my eyelids to daydream of the sun
clearing the rain, the morning is not there where I expect it, and
it draws me down. I would prefer a life of production sometimes
when I feel like this but my school is in demand always, more than
ever before with copycats in the US, where they build buildings
hundreds of feet in the air, plain-square design and with only steel
and concrete, and have only heard of me in passing. They should
know the sadness of these works in a time when they might replace
the church on the landscape, as a token of man’s mad march
forwards no matter what happens, and we are but peasants really,
now refused entry or entreaty of any sort. Ahhhh... I will use the
lamp, and walk outside, I cannot use words as well as I draw Modernism...
or teach it...

Walter G.
England February 1936

Michael Holland is an avid reader and reluctant poet, preferring to absorb the work of others, in lieu of an open mic. A transfer from
the Maryland Community College system, he is an English major largely for the reading lists, and a retired amateur electronic athlete.