After enrolling at the Technical University of Munich to study architecture, Walter Gropius (1883/1969) continued his studies at the University of Charlottenburg-Berlin, which he left in 1908 without obtaining his degree. That same year, Walter Gropius joined the office of Peter Behrens, where he worked alongside several architects who would become luminaries in their profession, including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Dietrich Marcks. After working for Behrens for two years, Walter Gropius established his own architecture and industrial design firm in 1910. At that time he produced wallpapers, interior furniture in series, car bodies and even a diesel locomotive.
The Fagus factory in Alfeld an der Leine, which he designed with Adolf Meyer, was his first major architectural work. With its transparent steel and glass facade, this factory building is widely regarded as a pioneering work of what would later be called "modern architecture," eventually evolving in the 1920s into the "Neues Bauen" or "New Objectivity" movement. The Fagus Factory was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in June 2011. After World War I, Gropius became a founding member of the Bauhaus: in 1919, he succeeded Henry van de Veldes as director of the Großherzoglich- Sächsischen Hochschule für Bildende Kunst in Weimar (Thuringia) and renamed the institute "Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar". Gropius served as director in Weimar until 1926 and then in Dessau.
