Qualla: ADGB Trade Union School

ADGB Trade Union School: Introduction

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sebastian Wallroth, CC BY 3.0. The school opened on 4 May 1930. It was taken away on 2 May 1933, three years and two days later. Between those dates, the low glass-and-brick complex in the pine woods at Bernau bei Berlin did exactly what it was designed for: it taught trade unionists labour law, industrial hygiene, management and economics, 120 at a time, in twin rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows looking into the trees. After 2 May 1933 the same rooms were used to train officers of the SS, the SD and the Gestapo. It is one of the most complete buildings the Bauhaus ever produced, and its history is a straight line between those two sentences.

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Image: Sebastian Wallroth | CC BY 3.0

ADGB Trade Union School: A Building Designed by Measurement

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fridolin freudenfett, CC BY-SA 4.0. Construction began in 1928, the year Hannes Meyer took over as director of the Bauhaus. He designed the school with Hans Wittwer, who taught the building theory course alongside him; both were Swiss, and the two had worked together in Basel. Students from the building theory cour...

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Image: Fridolin freudenfett | CC BY-SA 4.0

ADGB Trade Union School: Not a Sweatbox

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 44penguins (Angela M. Arnold), CC BY-SA 3.0. The comparison everyone makes is with Walter Gropius's Bauhaus building at Dessau, which was conceived for visual and symbolic effect and could turn into a sweatbox in summer behind all that glass. Bernau has just as much glass — large floor-to-ceiling windows are the defining fe...

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Image: 44penguins (Angela M. Arnold) | CC BY-SA 3.0

ADGB Trade Union School: Paths That Made You Meet People

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Clemensfranz, CC BY-SA 4.0. The site holds more than the teaching blocks. There are four teachers' residences and two single-storey semi-detached houses, plus sports facilities and an open-air swimming pool, and the school fed and housed both staff and trainees on the grounds. That was deliberate: the clien...

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Image: Clemensfranz | CC BY-SA 4.0

ADGB Trade Union School: 2 May 1933

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fridolin freudenfett, CC BY-SA 4.0. The General German Trade Union Federation had counted nearly 7.9 million members in 1920, and by 1933 its leaders under Theodor Leipart were trying to make peace with the new government in the hope of surviving it. On 2 May 1933, the day after the Nazis had staged their own versi...

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Image: Fridolin freudenfett | CC BY-SA 4.0

ADGB Trade Union School: Back in the Woods

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ladeburg LIVE, CC BY-SA 4.0. In the early 1950s the architect Georg Waterstradt added a second large structure alongside, borrowing the glass corridors and functionalist logic but in a darker brick — you can pick the two apart at a glance. In 1977 the East German government gave both buildings monument statu...

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Image: Ladeburg LIVE | CC BY-SA 4.0