Paul Betts is the keynote speaker for the Symposium Re-Forming Modernism: Craft, Design, and Architecture at the Bauhaus. His talk titled “The Shock of the Old: Some Reflections on the Bauhaus at 100” will take place on October 17, at 6 pm.

The centenary of the Bauhaus has spurred the dizzying production of new books, biographies and exhibitions about the international reach and general legacy of the twentieth century’s most celebrated design school long after its closure in Germany in 1933. However, the broad internationalization of the Bauhaus has obscured the ways in which it was fundamentally shaped by the hothouse politics of twentieth century German history. This lecture by contrast will focus on the changing relationship between the Bauhaus and German history more generally, with special attention devoted to the career of the Bauhaus’s most famous designer, Wilhelm Wagenfeld, as emblematic of the school’s legacy across twentieth century Germany and beyond.