Considerations on the equal treatment of fine and applied art, as Arnold Bode had originally wished for the first documenta in 1955, were not new in postwar Kassel1/9. Only a few years earlier, in November 1947, he had founded the Kassel Werkakademie, initially with Ernst Röttger and shortly afterwards also with Paul Haeßler, Kay Nebel, Hermann Mattern, and Stephan Hirzel, as the successor institution to the Art Academy, which had closed in 1933.
Their program followed a similar orientation to Bode's ideas for the first documenta. It was not aimed solely at training in the artistic genres of painting and sculpture, but also at practically oriented teaching that included the applied arts. In addition to academic artists, this new Art Academy primarily aimed to train practitioners for a modern, reconstructed Germany.
Apart from "Werkbund" ideas, the Kasseler Werkakademie explicitly referred to the Bauhaus. 1951 saw the publication of its first program guide. Right at the beginning it is explained in which tradition the university saw itself: