Dictionary
Burg Giebichenstein (Giebichenstein Castle)

Burg Giebichenstein in Halle, today seat of the University of Art and Design, counts, along with the Bauhaus, among the most important schools for applied art of the 1920s, and has brought forth numerous innovative works and trend-setting artists.
The school was founded in 1879, when the commercial drawing school and the 'Provinzial-Gewerbeschule' joined forces to form a new school for craftsmen, which was at first everything but innovative. Paul Thiersch (1879-1928) becam the school's director in 1915, and it was under his aegis that the institution advanced to be a vanguard training school for artisans.
Paul Thiersch, who had completed his education under Peter Behrens and Bruno Paul, had thought up an innovative and trend-setting system for art schools long before Walter Gropius came up with the Bauhaus program. Just as the Bauhaus did a little later, the school's focus was on handcrafts and on architecture and building in the sense of a work of art.
The vanguard period that Giebichenstein Castle went through was repeated in a quite similar way a little later at the Bauhaus: Expressionism, De Stijl, Constructivism and New Objectivity. The decorative Viennese Style was a particularity of Giebichenstein Castle, which was integrated into the curriculum by Maria Likarz. The latter was also head of the versatile class of female artisan labor, other courses offered included architecture and interior decoration (Paul Thiersch), sculpting (Gustav Weidanz), and as of 1919 also painting (Erwin Hahs) and metal art (Erich Lenné). An extensive range of other disciplines was also gradually added to the school's curriculum.
The competition with the Bauhaus lead to an expansion of the workshops as of 1919, which is why the school finally moved into the Unterburg Giebichenstein (1921/22). As of this time, the school was referred to as the "Werkstätten der Stadt Halle. Staatlich-städtische Kunstgewerbeschule Burg Giebichenstein" (Workshops of the City of Halle - State and Municipal School of Applied Art Giebichenstein Castle), often it was simply called "Burg" (Castle).
The paths of Giebichenstein and the Bauhaus, which had so far been paralleling, went different directions as of 1923: While the Bauhaus' emphasis was more and more on the unity of art and technology and the development of industrial mass production, the philosophy of Giebichenstein Castle continued to put the focus on exclusive artisan works, that were either unique pieces or produced in a very small series.
It may have been for that reason that many Bauhaus members, for instance Gerhard Marcks, Marguerite Friedländer and Wolfgang Tümpel, changed to Giebichenstein Castle instead of changing to the Bauhaus' new location in Dessau as of 1925. Even though these artists were not really happy with the Bauhaus increasingly turning to technology, it was their influence at Giebichenstein Castle that made for a stricter style. The former Bauhaus member Gerhard Marcks followed Thiersch as the director in 1928.
The vanguard development of Giebichenstein was halted by the National Socialists, at first by means of drastic saving measures, then by hate campaigns and finally when the National Socialist Hermann Schiebel was made director of Giebichenstein Castle. Taking the modernist style into the time after the dictatorship was not notably successful.
Giebichenstein Castle once more became a vanguard school for designers in the GDR, and has not lost any of its importance today.

Cf.: Dolgner, Angela: Burg Giebichenstein - Hochschule für Kunst und Design Halle. Geschichte und Geschichtsdokumentation einer Kunstschule; in: Jahrbuch für Universitätsgeschichte 6 (2003), pp. 251-261.