33 Facts About Walter Gropius

Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German-born American architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture.

Walter's great-uncle Martin Gropius was the architect of the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin and a follower of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, with whom Walter's great-grandfather Carl Gropius, who fought under Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher at the Battle of Waterloo, had shared a flat as a bachelor.

In 1915, Walter Gropius married Alma Mahler, widow of Gustav Mahler.

Walter Gropius and Alma's daughter, named Manon after Walter Gropius's mother, was born in 1916.

Walter Gropius married Ilse Frank, known as Ise, on 16 October 1923; they remained together until his death in 1969.

Ise Walter Gropius died on 9 June 1983 in Lexington, Massachusetts.

In 1908, after studying architecture in Munich and Berlin for four semesters, Walter Gropius joined the office of the architect and industrial designer Peter Behrens, one of the first members of the utilitarian school.

Walter Gropius left the firm of Behrens in 1910 and established a practice in Berlin with fellow employee Adolf Meyer.

Walter Gropius was commissioned in 1913 to design a car for the Prussian Railroad Locomotive Works in Konigsberg.

Walter Gropius published an article about "The Development of Industrial Buildings" in 1913, which included about a dozen photographs of factories and grain elevators in North America.

Walter Gropius's career was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

Walter Gropius was drafted in August 1914 and served as a sergeant major at the Western front during the war years and then as a lieutenant in the signal corps.

Walter Gropius was awarded the Iron Cross twice after fighting for four years.

In 1923, Walter Gropius designed his famous door handles, now considered an icon of 20th-century design and often listed as one of the most influential designs to emerge from Bauhaus.

Walter Gropius collaborated with Carl Fieger, Ernst Neufert and others within his private architectural practice.

Walter Gropius designed the Master Houses in Dessau, along with the Torten Housing Estate which was built from 1926 to 1928.

Walter Gropius designed large-scale housing projects in Berlin, Karlsruhe that were major contributions to the New Objectivity movement, including a contribution to the Siemensstadt project in Berlin.

Walter Gropius left the Bauhaus in 1928 and moved to Berlin.

Walter Gropius's work was part of the architecture event in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics.

Walter Gropius designed furniture, cars, high-rise housing developments Siedlung and an unrealized Palace of the Soviets in Moscow.

Walter Gropius was able to leave Nazi Germany in 1934 with the help of Maxwell Fry on the pretext of making a temporary visit to Italy for a film propaganda festival; he then fled to the United Kingdom to avoid the fascist powers of Europe.

Walter Gropius lived and worked in the artists' community associated with Herbert Read in Hampstead, London, as part of the Isokon group.

Walter Gropius arrived in the United States in February 1937, while their twelve-year-old daughter, Ati, finished the school year in England.

Walter Gropius was so satisfied with the result that she gave more land and financial support to four other professors, two of whom Gropius designed homes for.

Walter Gropius's house received a huge response and was declared a National Landmark in 2000.

Walter Gropius sat on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Visiting Committee at the end of his career.

Walter Gropius was one of several refugee German architects who provided information to confirm the typical construction of German houses to the RE8 research department set up by the British Air Ministry.

In 1945, Walter Gropius was asked by the young founding members of The Architects Collaborative to join as their senior partner.

In 1967, Walter Gropius was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member and became a full Academician in 1968.

Walter Gropius died on 5 July 1969, in Boston, Massachusetts, aged 86.

Walter Gropius described himself as a "tough old bird", and continued to make progress for about a week.

Mrs Walter Gropius deeded the Walter Gropius House in Lincoln to Historic New England in 1980, now a house museum.

The Walter Gropius House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988 and is available to the public for tours.