Nazism and the Bauhaus—The Real Reason Behind Its Closure

On July 20, 1933, all faculty members gathered at the Bauhaus in Berlin and held a vote. There was only one item on the agenda: whether to close the school themselves. The dissolution was decided by a majority vote.
The Bauhaus was not destroyed; it chose to close its own doors. However, the path to making that choice appear "voluntary" involved a decade of political pressure.

The First Attack – Thuringia's Right-Wing Government

The first blow from the Nazis came in 1924. In the Thuringian state elections, the Social Democratic Party was defeated, and a conservative coalition, including right-wing nationalists, came to power. The new government made no secret of its hostility towards the Bauhaus.
All faculty contracts were shortened to six months, and subsidies were halved. Rather than passively waiting, Gropius took preemptive action by declaring the school closed and relocating the Bauhaus to the city of Dessau. The mayor of Dessau, whose Social Democratic Party was in power, enticed them by promising to build a new school building.
However, the Nazi attacks did not stop. In January 1930, Wilhelm Frick became the Minister of Interior and Culture for Thuringia. This was the first time in German history that a Nazi had entered the cabinet. Frick immediately dismissed all Bauhaus-related personnel from the school on the former Bauhaus site and sent Paul Schultze-Naumburg as the new director instead.