Thomas Mann Fellow Andreas Platthaus is invited to Dartmouth College for a presentation at the Department of German Studies, to investigate: An American in Berlin — What Kept Lyonel Feininger? For his upcoming book project on the Bauhaus, Platthaus is looking at the forced ruptures within the history of Bauhaus—the move from Weimar to Dessau in 1925, the relocation to Berlin in 1932, and the forced closure of the school in 1933—and the resulting transformation in self-concept, aesthetics, and politics of the Bauhaus. In this project, Andreas Platthaus is turning in particular to Lyonel Feininger. The American at Bauhaus remained in Nazi-Germany until 1938,when he returned to the United States, but always remained true to his convictions. Platthaus will speak of the pressure to adapt and the forces of resistance in times of rising social radicalization.

Andreas Platthaus is a German journalist and author based in Leipzig and Frankfurt (Main). He studied economics and rhetorics, philosophy, and history in Aachen and Tübingen. He is vice directing editor of the cultural section, as well as editor for literature at the German daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In 2018, he received a Thomas Mann Fellowship and he is the author of multiple books, including “Der Krieg nach dem Krieg — Deutschland zwischen Revolution und Versailles 1918/19” (Rowohlt, 2018).