The Tempest

In 1937, the SS Europa, a German passenger ship crosses the Atlantic, transporting the desk of Walter Gropius in its cargo to the US. During its journey, a tempest will break out, persecuting the ship and its passengers, many of which flee from another—forthcoming—upheaval, that of World War II. Upon its arrival to Lincoln, US the glass shelf of the desk will appear to have been broken. The exact point in time where this incident occurred is up to now not identified. There are however strong suspicions that it was during that tempest.

Endnotes:

1. It still remains unclear which part of the shelf broke, the wood or the glass. Traced only in a 1938 photograph in Lincoln, the shelf later disappeared from the original furniture, appearing again in its reproductions in Weimar and Dessau.
2. Although there is evidence that Gropius travelled with the SS Europa to the US, it is contested whether the desk accompanied him in his journey. His only reference to the transport of his furniture is in a letter of 1937: “After I opened the cases from abroad, containing my furniture, I found myself in front of a heap of rubbish, so broken and damaged did they arrive after their transport.”
3. During WWII the Europa stopped its transatlantic route and was transformed into a military ship, operating under the dazzle camouflage tactic. The latter, though receiving ambivalent credit for its wartime efficiency, later influenced fashion in a similar way to the Bauhaus designs, leaving its trace in industrialised products up to this time.
4. The SS Europa, in an uncanny coincidence to the glass shelf, crushed due to a storm in the port of Le Havre in 1946, where it was relocated as a war reparation to France.
5. The tempest of that 1937 transatlantic journey is a fictional device. There are no documents providing proof neither of the incident not of its material repercussions.

Presented in the group exhibition Desk in Exile, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, Germany, 2016