Eugenics and the New Man in Modern Art Pedagogy: The Mazdaznan Movement at the Bauhaus

Through his innovative curriculum design and teaching methods at the Bauhaus—the ground-breaking German school of art and design—Johannes Itten continues to exert a profound influence on art pedagogy worldwide, above all in the areas of color theory, composition and artistic experimentation. Less widely acknowledged is the degree to which his conceptions about artistic development were interwoven with his intensive spiritual pursuits, especially during his tenure at the Bauhaus, 1919-1923, the height of his engagement with the new religious movement Mazdaznan. Scholars have noted Itten’s introduction of certain Mazdaznan physical practices at the school, including vegetarianism, breathing exercises, and yoga-like movement, yet the group’s advanced teachings--including esoteric eugenics practices in service of producing a more highly evolved Aryan race and the advent of the New Man--have received scant attention. While eugenics and racialized conceptions of human evolution may quickly bring to mind the genocidal policies of the National Socialists, it is easy to overlook that less extreme versions of such positions were far more widely held in the early years of the century than is commonly recognized today, finding support among educated populations in both Europe and the Americas. This paper will examine how Itten, a gifted and widely read artist, could have come to see in Mazdaznan the best remedy to the crisis he perceived in European society, and how elements of its teachings are paralleled within his aesthetic philosophy, a study that seems especially timely in the present political moment.