Walter Gropius
| Walter Gropius | |
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Walter Gropius (circa 1919). Photo by Louis Held
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| Born |
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius 18 May 1883 Berlin, German Empire |
| Died | 5 July 1969 (aged 86) Boston, Massachusetts, United States |
| Nationality | German |
| Occupation | Architect |
| Spouse(s) | Alma Mahler, Ise Gropius |
| Children | Manon Gropius, Beate ("Ati") Gropius |
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Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture.
Born in Berlin, Walter Gropius was the third child of Walter Adolph Gropius and Manon Auguste Pauline Scharnweber (1855–1933).
In 1915 Gropius married Alma Mahler (1879–1964), widow of Gustav Mahler. Walter and Alma's daughter, named Manon after Walter's mother, was born in 1916. When Manon died of polio at age 18, in 1935, composer Alban Berg wrote his Violin Concerto in memory of her (it is inscribed "to the memory of an angel"). Gropius and Alma divorced in 1920. (Alma had by that time established a relationship with Franz Werfel, whom she later married.) On 16 October 1923, Gropius married Ilse (later changed to Ise) Frank, and they remained together until his death in 1969. They adopted a daughter together, Beate Gropius, known as Ati. Ise Gropius died on 9 June 1983 in Lexington, Massachusetts.
Walter Gropius was drafted August 1914 and served as a sergeant and then as a lieutenant in the signal corps in the First World War. He survived being both buried under rubble and dead bodies, and shot out of the sky with a dead pilot. He was awarded the Iron Cross twice. Gropius then, like his father and his great-uncle Martin Gropius before him, became an architect. Gropius could not draw, and was dependent on collaborators and partner-interpreters throughout his career. In school he hired an assistant to complete his homework for him. In 1908, after studying architecture in Munich and Berlin for four semesters, Gropius joined the office of the renowned architect and industrial designer Peter Behrens, one of the first members of the utilitarian school. His fellow employees at this time included Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Dietrich Marcks.
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