Architect Walter Gropius

Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (1883 – 1969) was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture.

In 1915 Gropius married Alma Mahler, widow of Gustav Mahler, but divorced after 5 years. In 1923 he married Ilse (later changed to Ise) Frank, and they remained together until his death in 1969.

Walter Gropius and Alma Mahler (with beret)

Drafted into the army, he survived WWI both buried under rubble and dead bodies, and shot out of the sky with a dead pilot. He was awarded the Iron Cross twice. Gropius then, like his father and his great-uncle Martin Gropius before him, became an architect.

In 1923, Gropius designed his famous door handles, now considered an icon of 20th-century design and often listed as one of the most influential designs to emerge from Bauhaus.

The rise of Hitler in the 1930s drove Gropius out of Germany, to Britain and in 1937 to the United States.

Gropius dies on July 6, 1969 and today is remembered not only by his various buildings but also by the district of Gropiusstadt in Berlin.