Moving Away to the Other End of the World
Reflections on the Letters Between Tibor Weiner and Hannes Meyer from the DAM Archive

This article examines the correspondence between a teacher (Hannes Meyer) and his former student (Tibor Weiner), who met at the Bauhaus in Dessau, going on to live for a period in the Soviet Union. Each migrated to Latin America shortly before the outbreak of World War Two, and returned to Europe in the late 1940s. The surviving letters between Meyer and Weiner, preserved in the DAM Archive in Frankfurt am Main, are not only a testimony of comradeship but also a window into some key moments in the first half of the twentieth century.

One can find documents related to the Swiss architect Hannes Meyer (1889–1954) in several archives, namely the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) in Zürich, the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and the Bauhaus archives in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin. However, the bulk of his private papers are housed in the archives of the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt am Main (DAM), which hold most of Meyer’s personal letters, photographs, photocopies, scrapbooks, as well as published and unpublished articles. Examining this archive allows the diligent researcher to better understand Meyer’s complex personality, the scope of his interests, the evolution of his politics and his architectural career before, during, and after the Bauhaus—in Switzerland, Germany, the Soviet Union and Mexico. Among the many correspondences Meyer maintained that are now preserved in this archive is a batch of letters between Meyer and the Bauhaus-trained architect of Hungarian origin, Tibor Weiner (1906–1965).

Take for instance an undated letter Weiner wrote to Meyer in the beginning of 1938 which the younger architect ends by stating: “Then you also asked me what are my thoughts on Central Europe? I want to get to the other end of the world as soon as possible, if not on the moon.”^[1] Written shortly after Weiner’s arrival in Paris, this early letter is part of a correspondence—at times continuous, in other periods intermittent—spanning more than two decades. At the time it was written, Meyer and Weiner had known each other for eight years, having first met at the Bauhaus in Dessau and then spent much of the 1930s in the Soviet Union (living most of the time in the same apartment at Arbat Square in Moscow). Now they were, respectively, in France and Switzerland. The two men had much in common. Aside from being formerly teacher and student, fellow travelers and, eventually, Communist Party members (although in different moments and in different places), Meyer and Weiner both came from landlocked Central European countries and shared a common past, as noted above, at the Bauhaus in Dessau and the Soviet Union. They both eventually migrated to Latin American countries during the Second World War, Weiner in Chile and Meyer in Mexico. Later, they both returned to their native countries—with Meyer returning to Switzerland and Weiner to the other side of the Iron Curtain in Hungary—a few years after the war’s conclusion. The correspondence between the two can be characterized as an exchange of letters between a protagonist—Meyer—who due to his historical importance had his effects inscribed in several different archives, and a supporting character—Weiner—whose life story is more elusive and whose scant surviving papers are scattered between family members and at the archive of the Hungarian Museum of Architecture in Budapest. This correspondence is valuable for the insight it provides into aspects of Meyer’s life and work but it also provides a key to understanding the life and career of Weiner, who was certainly influenced by his former teacher, but went on to build a career entirely of his own making.

A lot has been written about Meyer at the Bauhaus. At the moment of his hiring by Walter Gropius, Meyer’s professional credentials consisted of the design of a housing estate in Basel for the Swiss Co-op, his Constructivist-inspired entries to the 1926 Petersschule competition in Basel and to the Palace of the League of Nations competition in Geneva the following year (both undertaken in association with Hans Wittwer). Outside of these designs, he was known for having penned “Die Neue Welt” (“The New World”), an ingenious text from 1926 where he suggested an updated role for architecture, critically unpacking “the latest” in everything from political/conceptual categories like cosmopolitanism, to collectivization and cooperation, mechanization and science. In April 1927 Meyer started teaching at the Bauhaus and was appointed director the following year. Two years into his tenure Meyer was fired on political grounds, after which he arranged a job in the Soviet Union, taking with him a group of seven Bauhaus architecture graduates—the so-called “Red Bauhaus Brigade.” While some of these students died in the Soviet Union, victims of Stalinist repression, the careers of some others extended well beyond the period they spent together there and took widely divergent paths. Weiner is an example of the latter.

Tibor Weiner’s time at the Bauhaus was brief. He entered the school as a postgraduate student, having received his architectural diploma in Hungary, and became one of the members of the Red Bauhaus Brigade who joined Meyer in the Soviet Union. Judging from their exchange of letters, the two men established a lasting friendship, one that while revealing an underlying hierarchy—who was the teacher and who the student is never in doubt—is also a testament to comradeship and complicity despite the two men’s 17-year difference in age. Weiner wrote the first surviving letter in their collected correspondence at the tail end of 1937 or the beginning of 1938, when he was in Paris and Meyer in Geneva (he had left the Soviet Union in 1936 and Weiner followed a year later). The two main topics of their first letters were the work situation in Paris and possible countries to which Weiner could emigrate. Weiner mentioned that finding a job in Paris was particularly difficult and that he had not only applied for architecture jobs but was also seeking employment within advertising agencies. He mentions Sweden or Holland (where he notes that his Dutch Bauhaus classmate Johan Niegemann had work prospects) as possible countries to which he imagined emigrating, as well as his having evaluated South Africa, England, Australia and Ceylon (the Swiss architect Hans Schmidt, who he had worked for in Orsk, had spoken to him of opportunities there). He had also considered Chile, Argentina and Mexico as possible emigration destinations.^[2] We know for a fact that throughout 1938 Weiner, who was Jewish, attempted to obtain immigration papers for Australia via the Australian Jewish Welfare Society as well as the Australian Department of Interior in Canberra.^[3] Weiner claimed that he was trying to arrange meetings with companies that were open to hiring “unsere Leute” (“our people”), most likely referring to left-wing sympathizers, explaining that he was also contacting colonization and emigration societies who offered assistance in securing jobs abroad.^[4] In fact, Weiner had begun trying to leave Europe from the moment he arrived in Paris. This speaks to the precariousness of his situation in France, where work papers were becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.

In Weiner’s early letters to Meyer the young Hungarian not only discussed his own prospects but also shared information useful to Meyer, who was in Switzerland and facing a similar crossroad. Weiner mentioned that America was the most promising destination, that there was a Bauhaus scene in Chicago, and that he had encountered a brochure about the Hungarian László Moholy-Nagy’s academic endeavors there. Weiner also mentioned that his former Bauhaus classmate, the German industrial designer Hin Bredendieck, was teaching in Chicago. Though apparently unenthused by the prospect, he wrote that emigrating to the United States appeared to be his best option, particularly because most of his other possibilities were in “wild” parts of the world. He also mentions having contacted the Austrians Wilhelm Schütte and Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (who had been in the Soviet Union and had also been living in Paris for several months),^[5] the French architect André Lurçat (also back in Paris after living in the Soviet Union), and the American Paul Nelson (who had moved to France in the 1920s).^[6] Halfway through the first of the early letters he writes: “Something must happen, because the prospect of going home (to Hungary) becomes ever more threatening, and is not tempting at all with our new neighbors (an allusion to Nazi Germany).”^[7] The second letter ends with Weiner stating his previously mentioned intention to go to the other end of the world as soon as possible, if not the moon: Weiner saw the writing on the wall, but in fact had to wait until mid-1939 to secure a visa to leave France.

The first dated letter from the Meyer-Weiner correspondence was written by Meyer in March 1938. In it Meyer advised Weiner to go to the United States, where Moholy-Nagy and company had paved the way for former Bauhaus students. Meyer also expressed his opinion that working in the United States and studying American building techniques would favor Weiner’s professional development.^[8]

In the meantime, in July 1938 Weiner began working in the studio of architect Pierre Forestier (1902–1989), then chief architect for the National Federation for Pulmonary Diseases as well as regional architect of the postal authority in several French département. Weiner worked with Forestier on the development of a sanatorium at Bullion Longchene and several preliminary studies for projects of a similar nature, as well as several of smaller private projects. Also in 1938, Weiner and Forestier collaborated with Schütte-Lihotzky on a competition design for a girls’ school and kindergarten in Paris.

From a letter Meyer wrote years later, it would appear that he met Weiner in 1938 and again in 1939 in Geneva and Paris prior to both departing Europe: these would be the last occasions the two would meet each other in person. In mid-July 1939, Weiner and his new wife Judith Vadja, a fellow Hungarian, left France for Chile— the first country to offer the couple immigration papers. Chile’s receptivity to Weiner’s visa petition was most likely connected to the earthquake that had struck the southern part of the country earlier in the year, creating a demand for construction professionals. They arrived in mid-August and not soon after a letter arrived from Meyer (who had migrated with his family to Mexico some months earlier), dated August 21, 1939. By October Weiner was reporting to Meyer on his first encounters with Chilean idiosyncrasy:

 “In everything you say or criticize about Chilean architecture, everything is ‘claro’ (of course) and simple and self-evident, and, after all, this happens in a splendid landscape, in the shadow of the Cordillera, so you also believe it. But afterwards ... everything is ‘mañana’ (tomorrow), ‘pero’ (but), etc., and nothing happens.”^[9]

Adopting a more serious tone, the letter continues with a thorough explanation of the division of labor in architecture in Chile, the role of the state in building infrastructure and the status of private commissions and private capital under what Weiner described as a socialist government.^[10]

On October 26, 1939 Meyer wrote to Weiner:

 “we are, Lena and I, glad for you, that everything was done shortly before the end of the game. The bitter times lie behind you in F. (France), now you will be overcoming the initial difficulties. You are also right: your situation in Chile is similar to ours here and the characteristics of the local professional life are the same for us here (in Mexico).”^[11]

Meyer’s letters always included information on the whereabouts of other Bauhäuslers; for instance, Meyer mentions having given advice to the sister of the German architect Philipp Tolziner, a member of the Red Bauhaus Brigade then imprisoned in the Usollag labor camp in Solikamsk, on how to attempt contacting her brother.^[12] In the same letter, Meyer refers a to another acquaintance of theirs, Wolfgang Duncker, who had also been imprisoned in the Soviet Union, mentioning that he had learned Duncker’s wife was allowed to visit, which he thinks proves that contact is possible.^[13] Towards the end of this October 26 letter, Meyer asked Weiner for Bauhaus material of his own or from others, including whatever catalogues and pamphlets he had taken with him into exile, as he was preparing one or two books—one of them on polytechnic education on his time teaching at the Bauhaus and his experience at the Vasi School of Architecture in Moscow. Meyer wrote that he had already collected some 80 images but that his private papers were still in Geneva. The topic of a Bauhaus publication was a recurrent theme in Meyer’s letters over the years, and he became increasingly preoccupied with writing about “his” Bauhaus, a topic which he was well aware had been left out of Bauhaus-related exhibitions that had taken place in the United States.^[14]

In a letter Weiner wrote to Meyer in January 1940, he described his first job in Chile as an architectural draftsman at the Ministry of Development.^[15] Weiner eventually found employment with Chilean architect Ricardo Müller Hess—who held important posts at the National Office of Public Works, and at the Ministry of Education—and together the pair won a series of competitions. In his last letter to Meyer from Chile, dated 8 February 1948, one can surmise there had been a pause in Weiner’s responses to Meyer: he summarized his time in Chile, dividing into two periods—a first span dominated by time spent designing buildings with Müller and a second period which began with Müller’s death in 1943, after which he worked as an independent architect and contractor. Ultimately, Weiner’s recollection of his Chilean architectural work was negative, due to the fact that while working with Müller he did most of the work but received only a percentage of the total earnings, and after the latter’s death would encounter a series of new difficulties. Throughout he had a hard time making ends meet.^[16]

Meyer told Weiner in a letter dated from March 1940 that he has become director of the Instituto de Urbanismo in Mexico City, where, despite the austerity of the facilities (only three cabinets and nine drawing tables), nine eager students were enrolled. He described how his adjunct faculty consisted solely of Mexican architect José Luis Cuevas, and that on occasion special teachers for “communications,” “economy” and “human geography” were brought in. In this letter Meyer described his schedule in detail: three hours of teaching every weekday morning, and on Saturdays he and his students would go on expeditions (this teaching job would last only two years). Meyer told Weiner that he had been busy with competitions, mentioning a proposal for the Cultural Center of the Spanish Community in Mexico City, and also including details about the work of his wife Lena Bergner, a weaver with whom Weiner was familiar from the Bauhaus and his time sharing an apartment with the couple in Moscow, including that the pair had worked towards establishing a textile business with the Otomí Indians in the mountains some 150 kilometers north of Mexico City. This letter also offered a political analysis of the world and Mexico in particular:

“Think that in a few months here, too, the situation will be more dangerous. Now that the Jews in Palestine are sacrificed by Chamberlain. In addition, preparations for contestation riots here (sic). (This seems to anticipate an uprising against the presidency of Lazaro Cárdenas.) The Cardenas government interspersed with corrupt elements. Attitude of the army is not beyond all doubt.”^[17]

In 1946, towards the end of his time in Chile, Weiner also began to teach architecture. We learn from a 1948 letter written just before Weiner left Chile that teaching had saved him from an unbearable work rhythm and constant worries over financial difficulties during what would be the last two years of his time in South America. Weiner had become involved with the reform movement of the school of architecture at the University of Chile, which was student-led and aspired to modernize Chilean architectural education and introduce a greater degree of social consciousness to the curriculum.^[18] Concerning the class Weiner taught in Chile, from this same letter we learn that it was an introduction to architecture, with both a theoretical and a practical component introducing students to architecture through a sequence of exercises that studied human scale and analyses of variables that condition people in buildings (functions, circulation, visual relationships, ventilation, etc.).^[19]

In March 1948, Weiner and his family (by then he and his wife had had two daughters) left Chile due to growing hostility displayed there to leftists, particularly members of the Communist Party (after they left, the Party was proscribed and its members persecuted).^[20] At the end of Weiner’s letter one finds a handwritten note from his wife Judith confirming that the last years in Chile have been stressful and correcting her husband by clarifying that the couple’s daughters are not six and four— as he had written—but seven and four years old. She also asked Meyer how many children he and Lena Bergner now had, stating that she hopes to meet Meyer and his family.^[21] (In fact, the last letter Meyer had sent Weiner finished with a summary of his own family, which now included a daughter and a son).^[22]

After a rough start in Hungary, Weiner ended up seeing more of his designs realized than Meyer. This is dutifully mentioned in Meyer’s last surviving letter to Weiner, dated June 11, 1951: “We have heard of the great work that you, as an architect, accomplish to the best of your home country … It would be useful if you could send us some construction magazines or art magazines, especially if they include your projects.”^[23] Meyer is referring to the master plan designed by Weiner for the Hungarian postwar industrial city of Dunaújváros, originally called Sztálinváros. The letter includes a long summary of all the official positions Meyer held in Mexico and his various collaborations with Lena and reads like a tribute to a country they had left two years before after an intense decade of work that, however, did not include any realized building projects. It also brings to the fore Meyer and his wife’s difficulty finding work since returning to Switzerland, and their anxiety over their apparent inability to reintegrate themselves in Switzerland. (Based on other documents, it is possible to establish that their prospects in Mexico had been equally bad before they left). In this letter Meyer also insisted on the importance of publishing a posthumous “Bauhaus-Album,” and goes as far as describing it as a “dream” he and Lena possess.^[24]

The exchange of letters between Hannes Meyer and Tibor Weiner reveal many aspects of the period in which they were written, as well as about the two correspondent’s respective personas. Moreover, their exchange is rich in clues regarding important figures of the period, many of whom are mentioned in this text. One can equally read these letters as emblematic of the perspective of those displaced by the gathering conflict in Europe, as well as the social structure of Mexico and Chile in the 1940s. Especially during their years in exile in Latin America, with the war unfolding in Europe and following its conclusion, current events are a main preoccupation for both men. Reading these letters, it is evident they were glad to be far from the conflict, but ambivalent about the thought they might never return.

A memoir by another Bauhaus student, the Hungarian photographer Etel Fodor, is worth mentioning in this regard, and its title, Not an Unusual Life for the Time and the Place, is applicable to the situation of many other Bauhaus students and teachers—and many of their likeminded contemporaries besides. Like many of the Bauhäuslers of the Meyer period, Fodor spent some time in the Soviet Union, and like Meyer and Weiner ended up far from Europe—South Africa in her case.^[25] Meyer and Weiner’s life journeys were not unusual for their time and place, and it is possible to think about the peripatetic lives of several of their contemporaries in similar terms. For example, the movement between Russia, Switzerland, Holland and East Germany of the Dutch Bauhaus teacher Mart Stam. Or, the movement between Russia, Switzerland, Iran and Chile of the Swiss Red Bauhaus Brigade member René Mensch. Meyer and Weiner are part of an itinerant dimension of Bauhaus and left-leaning architectural culture, one that is different than the Bauhaus set that goes to America, and different than the set that settles in Palestine, because they jump from one country to another before, during and after World War Two, a time when a combination of political aspiration and the upheaval of war dispersed people across the globe.