Gropius Room Pavilion in Weimar’s Finnish partner city of Hämeenlinna

On Saturday, 10 June 2023, the Gropius Room Pavilion will be handed over to Weimar’s Finnish partner city of Hämeenlinna during an opening ceremony. The Gropius Room Pavilion, which has been travelling around Weimar’s partner cities as an ambassador for the Bauhaus and democracy since 2019, will form part of public life in Hämeenlinna this summer before returning to the founding site of the Bauhaus in mid-August after a journey that has lasted four years. In Weimar, the original director’s room will set up outside the Bauhaus-Museum Weimar to celebrate »100 Years of Bauhaus Exhibition«.

Hämeenlinna was Weimar’s first partner city – and is thus also its oldest. The partnership dates back to 1963 when Jutta Körnig brought exhibits from the first Bauhaus exhibition of 1923 from Weimar to Hämeenlinna and organised a Bauhaus exhibition there. It was most likely this contact that led to establishment of the town partnership, which was made official in 1970.

The pavilion is currently being set up by a team of Master’s architecture students (Hannah Ernst, Raphael Witte, Julian Pracht and Balint Kemey) under the direction of Julia Heinemann, who is a research associate within the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.

The celebrations to mark 60 years of the Bauhaus partner exhibition in Hämeenlinna and revival of the city partnership will begin in the far north this coming Saturday. The Thuringian State Secretary for Education, Youth, Sports and former President of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Prof. Dr. Winfried Speitkamp, will accompany the Weimar delegation led by Lord Mayor Peter Kleine. Several members of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar’s newly formed Presidium headed by the current President Prof. Peter Benz will also attend the opening event.

With the kind support of the university’s friends society (Freundeskreis der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar e. V.).