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CONTROVERSIES SURROUNDING BAUHAUS ARCHITECTURE
priate” to the times.15 The power of such arguments would be proven a short time later, when the appointment of a former Bauhaus director to a professorship at Harvard University resulted in a direct confrontation between conservative circles and those who championed innovation and open-mindedness. In 1936, when Joseph Hudnut, then dean of the School of Architecture, began negotiations with the university board and with his own faculty on the appointment of Gropius or Mies, the dissent of the conservative faction created significant problems. Hudnut described the difficulties in a letter to Mies in September of that year: “It would be foolish to pretend that there will not be opposition to the appointment of a modern architect as Professor of Design. In Berlin, I tried to make clear to you the cause of this opposition—which is based in part on ignorance and in part on a difference in principles—and since my visit in Berlin, I have received letters which promise an opposition even more serious than I expected.”16 If negative criticism is often the result of deviation from the dominant aesthetic taste, it must not be forgotten that a large portion of the architecture produced by the Bauhaus was also tied to social aims. To overcome such fundamental obstacles in the United States was not easy, especially since European modernism was seen by certain conservative groups as a degenerate culture’s destructive attack on America.
POLITIC ALLY MOTIVATED BARRIERS
In processes of reception, not only the subject of the reception but also the timing and the historical background in its entirety must be considered. This was especially true for the United States. The year 1930 marked a significant change in the way the United States viewed itself: the country no longer conceived of itself as a country of immigrants. Immigration quotas were introduced on the grounds of high unemployment, a measure that was intended to prevent any further strain on the job market. Its consequence was, however, a changed way of thinking. Newcomers were considered “aliens,” and a more stringent hierarchy among immigrants on the basis of nationality evolved. The United States, like other countries, had never been equally receptive to different cultures. In the case of Germany, the issues were complicated: on the one hand, Americans still admired the cultural legacy of classical music, science, and traditional art; on the other hand, Germany was seen as the initiator of World War I. After a brief thaw, these sentiments congealed into a new hard line, especially after the National Socialists took power. On the eve of the Second World War, politically motivated barriers appeared that would make it more difficult for the friends and supporters of the new architecture to prevail.17