Weimar modernists sought to rebuild a medieval-style integrated culture on socialist foundations.

Evidence

Bruno Taut wrote in the manifesto of the Arbeitsrat für Kunst, founded immediately after the Revolution of November 1918: ‘Art and people must form an entity. Art shall no longer be a luxury for the few, but should be enjoyed and experienced by the broad masses. The aim is the alliance of the arts under the wing of a great architecture.’ The central role of architecture in restoring, on a socialist basis, the kind of integrated culture achieved by the Middle Ages was underlined by Walter Gropius, writing at the same time: ‘Painters, sculptors, break down the barriers around architecture and become co-builders and comrades-in-arms towards act’s ultimate goal: the creative idea of the Cathedral of the Future, which will once more encompass everything in one form - architecture and sculpture and painting.’ — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 243

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘Cathedral of the Future’ Gesamtkunstwerk ideal connects with the reader’s knowledge of avant-garde totalizing ambitions, mirroring debates about unified cultural projects in the Marxism-and-Form tradition.