But the right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD), the favourite in the autumn election, has a problem with Bauhaus. It sees architectural modernism as alienated. The Nazis viewed it in a similar way — as degenerate — when they came to power in the 1930s.
Through simple, functional and elegant design toward a fairer society — that is, in simplified terms, the principle behind Bauhaus, the art school that had a major influence on the aesthetics of twentieth-century architecture. For extremists from the Saxony-Anhalt branch of Alternative for Germany, however, such architecture is not patriotic enough.
“Bauhaus symbolises uprootedness. Bauhaus symbolises the detachment of architecture from a specific place,” says Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, the Saxony-Anhalt AfD’s spokesperson for culture.
In its election campaign, Alternative for Germany is betting on anti-immigration rhetoric and the economy. But culture is precisely one area in which state governments have real powers. AfD wants to use them to shift away from Bauhaus and towards national heroes such as Otto von Bismarck, the unifier of the Reich, ancient emperors, or soldiers killed in the world wars.
The Tugendhat Villa in Brno is celebrating 20 years on the UNESCO World Heritage List and is inviting visitors to take part in special tours (in Czech)
“Bauhaus means building the same way everywhere in the world. Bauhaus is the architecture of globalisation, of the so-called ‘people from nowhere’. We, however, are the party of ‘people from here’,” Tillschneider explains the far-right party’s position.
Functionalist landmarks based on the style set out by Bauhaus can be found all over the world. The best-known Czech example is Villa Tugendhat in Brno. Its architect, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, also headed the school in Dessau. He was its last director before the Nazis came to power and shut it down.
“From the AfD’s perspective, we are un-German. Such terms evoke the period a century ago. The wording is very similar, and that is also the intention,” says Barbara Steiner, director of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation.
According to Steiner, AfD is mainly using its attacks to ignite a culture war, drawing on the same arguments once used by Adolf Hitler’s regime. The Nazis branded Bauhaus a “Jewish breeding ground of Bolshevism” and had the school shut down. They themselves embraced pompous marble buildings meant to embody Germanic domination over the world.
‘I hardly ever came across any neo-Nazis in the party,’ says the MP who left the AfD (in Czech)
According to CT’s Berlin correspondent Helena Truchlá, Alternative for Germany rejects the parallel with the Nazi era. “AfD does not present it that way, but it keeps coming back to that. For example, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider already campaigned in 2025 for the slogan of the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt to be changed, with reference to Bauhaus, from ‘thinking modern’ to ‘thinking German’ — a phrase Adolf Hitler used in one of his speeches in 1938,” Truchlá explains.
September’s state election in Saxony-Anhalt could be the first since the end of the Second World War to open the way for the far right to come to power. AfD is polling above 35 percent. Whether it will win a majority on its own, or be backed by defectors from other parties, remains unclear. Officially, no one wants to cooperate with it.
An article written by Helena Truchlá, ČT24, kak (CT), initially published on 24 June 2026, 06:30 (CEST)