Meyer's radical view on architectural creativity agitated more traditional members of the Bauhaus such as Klee and Kandinsky, and even the constructivists such as Moholy-Nagy. Seen as uncompromising left-wing and anti-art, Meyer's position at the Bauhaus caused the resignation of Marcel Breuer, Herbert Bayer and L‡zl— Moholy-Nagy. When Meyer was chosen by Gropius to be director of the Bauhaus, it was commonly thought that the school was headed for disaster. Ironically, however, the Bauhaus enjoyed its most productive and capitalistic era under the direction of the Marxist Meyer. Many of the workshops became profitable, especially the mural-painting department, which produced a very popular series of wallpaper designs. Four and a half million rolls of Bauhaus wallpaper were sold in the first year of production alone. Weaving and furniture workshops earned sizable funds for the school as well. For the first time the school was achieving what it set out to do, but it was to be a short-lived success. As the political atmosphere in Germany turned increasingly anti-Bolshevik, Meyer was forced to resign. The last stage of the Bauhaus began with Mies van der Rohe as Director of the school.

With Mies as director, architecture became even more central to the Bauhaus than it had under Meyer. Mies was world-renowned for his modern architectural creations of steel and glass and was thus well suited to lead the Bauhaus as it moved increasingly towards becoming a strictly architecture school. Even though Mies worked very hard to transform the image of the school from a left-wing Bolshevik sympathizer group to a non-political, architecture school, fate was against him. In 1931, the Nazis gained control of the Dessau city parliament, and it saw the Bauhaus as a haven for Jews, Bolsheviks and cosmopolitan "non-German" viewpoints. Shortly after the school was forced to close down on the 30 of September, 1932 Nazis destroyed much of the building. In a last ditch attempt to resuscitate the school, Mies rented an abandoned telephone factory in the Steglitz suburb of Berlin. It was a short-lived feat however. Hitler became Chancellor shortly after the school reopened and declared war on modern art institutions, the Bauhaus being a prime example. On 10 August 1933, the Bauhaus was closed, this time permanently.