Herbert BAYER Hyperinflation Bank Note Weimar BAUHAUS 1923 Modernist Typography
Item History & Price
| Reference Number: Avaluer:64890 | Featured Refinements: Bauhaus Antiquities |
| Material: Paper | Style: Bauhaus |
| Type: Typography | Age: 1900-1940 |
| Original/Repro: Original |
A One Million Mark hyperinflation banknote designed inside the Bauhaus by Herbert Bayer in 1923
ITEM DETAILS
The note is in good circulated condition with some creasing wear and marking consistent with age and use. It measures approx. 7.2 cm x 14.4 cm.
CONTEXT
Herbert Bayer attended the Weimar Bauhaus as a pupil from 1921 to 1923, at the time the economic crisis in post-WW1 Weimar was developing and reaching its dramatic peak.
He initially took Johannes Itten...'s revolutionary Preliminary Course on colour and form, then moved on to study mural painting with Wassily Kandinsky and Oskar Schlemmer.
It was at this time that he created the Universal alphabet; the lower-case only typography now synonymous with the Bauhaus and its powerful legacy.
In 1923 he was also commissioned by the Thüringian State in Weimar to design the new high value banknotes. The impoverished Weimer Republic government was desperately producing emergency money - increasingly high single note denominations - in an attempt to combat acute hyper-inflation.
Bayer returned to the Bauhaus in 1925 - now located at Dessau - as teacher, to lead a new course in advertising and typography. He remained a tutor there until 1928, the same year Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius departed.
LITERATURE
An illustration of the banknote can be found in the catalogue for the famous 50 Years of the Bauhaus exhibition, which was held at the Royal Academy in London in 1968, on page 118.
© Text and photographs copyright of room_606. All rights reserved.
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