Birthday Card: Konrad Wachsmann, 1943

Konrad Wachsmann was one of many European refugees who passed through the Gropius House during the years before and after the war. He stayed in the house for more than a year and was living there at the time of Gropius’s sixtieth birthday. Gropius spent evenings with Wachsmann in the basement developing a system using prefabricated panels to reduce the cost of constructing housing, a goal to which both men were passionately dedicated. The panel connector they were working on together is what seems to be strangling Wachsmann in this image.