WALTER PETERHANS
American, born in Germany
The reputation of Walter Peterhans, a former Bau-
haus instructor, has long been secondary to that of
what are considered the main representatives of
modern photography, those who practiced during
the medium’s formative growth in Europe during
the 1920s. This is due, in part, to the fragmentary
way his photographic works were made known to
the public, and in part because he dedicated himself
more to his teaching than to his own art. Because of
his profound influence as a teacher on students in
Germany and in the United States, Peterhans is
remembered more for his promotion of the medium
as an independent form of expression than as a
practicing photographer.
Peterhans’ first experiments with photography
began early with the encouragement of his father,
the director of Zeiss-Ikon AG Dresden. His educa-
tion included scientific training that later would
come to good use as an instructor. In 1918 he
began studying in the mechanical engineering
department of the Technical University of Saxony
in Dresden, then until 1924 he studied construction,
mathematics, and philosophy in Munich and Go ̈t-
tingen. In 1925 and 1926, Peterhans learned photo-
graphic reproduction and print processing at the
Academy of Graphic and Book Arts in Leipzig.
He then went to Berlin where he began working as
a freelance industrial and portrait photographer. In
1928, he participated in his first group exhibition,
and with this he came into contact with the path-
breaking photographers of the avant-garde. In the
same year he joined the Society of German Photo-
graphers. In Berlin he also began to teach. Among
his pupils were the photographers Grete Stern and
Ellen Auerbach, who together took over his pho-
tography salon, when, in 1929, Hannes Meyer
promoted him to director of photography studies
at the Dessau Bauhaus. It was here that he showed
his first and, in his lifetime, only individual exhibi-
tion. He approved the new direction Meyer was
moving the Bauhaus—toward a scientific founda-
tion, which Peterhans implemented in the course
work of the photography department. For the first
time the medium was institutionalized with intro-
ductory instruction on optics and photochemistry.
With the close of the Dessau school, Peterhans
then worked at the Berlin Bauhaus until 1933,
directing the course work for advertising photogra-
phy. Upon the dissolution of the Bauhaus by the
Nationalist Socialists (Nazis) as they ascended to
power in Germany, he continued to teach at Werner
Graeff’s photography school in Berlin, then from
1935 to 1937 at the Reimann-Ha ̈ring-Schu ̈le (after
1936 under the name Kunst-und-Werk-Schule). On
the side he was also active as a journalist and free-
lance photographer. His work was already noticed
overseas. An article from 1934 in the progressive
Cahiers d’Art, which regularly reviewed Pablo
Picasso’s artistic development, refers to his work
and that of his students Auerbach and Stern (who
had formed a studio known as ‘‘foto ringl + pit’’).
When Peterhans emigrated to the United States
in 1938 he found a position, at the request of Mies
van der Rohe, at the Armour Institute in Chicago
where he worked in various departments at the
school. It was at this time that Peterhans aban-
doned photography because he could not adapt it
effectively into his programs in visual training.
Visual training was also added to the introductory
course work at La ́szlo ́Moholgy-Nagy’s ‘‘New Bau-
haus’’ (later Institute of Design) and conceived as
an experiment in cultivating students’ aesthetic
skills that demanded intellectual discipline and cri-
tical judgment. From 1945 to 1947 Peterhans was
active as an instructor for the Committee on Social
Thought at the University of Chicago, where philo-
sophy served as the binding element between closely
integrated departments. In 1953 he became a guest
lecturer at the Hochschule fu ̈r Gestaltung in Ulm,
Germany, and directed the introductory course.
From 1959 to 1960 he taught at the Hochschule
fu ̈r Bildende Ku ̈nste in Hamburg. Unfortunately,
a great deal of his photographic work from the
1920s seemed to have been lost.
Peterhans’ teaching at the Bauhaus left a mark on
the practice of photography at the institution, a ped-
agogical approach that Hannes Meyer introduced to
other areas of study. Peterhans demanded a practical
orientation and a scientific rigor applied to creative
experimentation; under his guidance the medium
was professionalized and avant-garde experiments
receded to the background. In Moholy-Nagy’sPETERHANS, WALTER