Émigré Bauhaus Teachers and Students in the United States In April 1952, Bill wrote a letter to the U.S. High Commissioner in Germany, John McCloy, stating that many people connected with the Bauhaus had been murdered by the Nazis because they were resolutely “anti-Nazi” in their thoughts and ideals. About a dozen “Bauhaus folks” managed to flee to the U.S., where they went on to have a major impact on teaching practices, so that the influence of the Bauhaus substantially lived on in the U.S.:26 • Walter Gropius: chairman, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University • Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: director, architecture department, Armour Institute of Technology (today’s Illinois Institute of Technology), Chicago • Ludwig Hilberseimer: Armour Institute of Technology • Hin Bredendieck: several posts, including at the New Bauhaus, Chicago • Josef and Anni Albers: design department, Yale University and before that Black Mountain College, North Carolina • Walter Peterhans: Armour Institute of Technology Bill invited Walter Peterhans, master of photography in the final years of the Bauhaus, to be visiting lecturer at the Ulm School of Design in August 1953. He extended the same invitation to Josef Albers, whose teaching in his Weimar years had had a profound influence on Bill’s aesthetic and ethical education as a young man. During his time at the Bauhaus, Bill had also got to know Josef Albers’s wife, the tapestry designer and artist Anni Albers (née Fleischmann).
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