Bauhausstadt Dessau

From 1925 to 1932, the city was home to one of the most famous architecture and art schools in the world: the Bauhaus. Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe succeeded in bringing artists such as Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Lyonel Feininger to Dessau. Since 1996, Bauhaus and Masters’ Houses have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The newly built Bauhaus Museum was opened in 2019 and presents the outstanding collection of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation.

With Hugo Junkers, one of the most important German engineers and entrepreneurs of the 20th century worked in Dessau, which made Dessau one of the most important industrial cities in Central Germany. Dessau gained international renown in the 1920s through junkers’ gas appliances and aircraft as well as through the settlement of the Bauhaus.
With the Anhaltisches Theater, Dessau-Roßlau is home to a nationally important 4-genre theatre that combines spoken, music, dance and puppet theatre.

Prince Leopold I, who went down in history as the “Old Dessauer”, dominates the square in front of the city and castle church of St. Mary. Once the church, in which Luther also preached, was decorated with works from the Cranach workshop. Three of these paintings are exhibited in St. John’s Church.

Kurt Weill, the composer of the “Threepenny Opera”, the poet Wilhelm Müller and the scholar Moses Mendelssohn are among the famous sons of the city.