Summer Design Exhibitions -German Design 1949–89 - Two Countries, One History
More than thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Vitra Design Museum presents the first panoramic overview of post-war design in the two Germanies.
Episode 2: German Design 1949–1989 - Two Countries, One History
If German design was put on the map in the 1920s by the Bauhaus school, it suddenly took two different direction after the division of Germany in 1949. In the West, design became a driving force in the ‘Wirtschaftswunder’ (economic miracle), while in the East it was absorbed into the socialist planned economy.
The Fall of the Berlin Wall, November 12th, 1989. © Tim Wegner / laif
More than thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Vitra Design Museum presents the first panoramic overview of post-war design in the two Germanies.
West
East
The exhibition offers a comparative selection of design from East and West Germany and explore ideological and aesthetic differences as well as parallels and interrelations between East and West.
Advertising for Trabant 601 Universal, 1965, © Faksimile: Trabant Team Freital e.V. Freital, 2020
Cheap plastic and shrill colours in the East, cool functionalism in the West – the exhibition breaks with simplistic stereotypes and presents a differentiated view. Legendary automobiles like the ‘Trabant’ (1958) and coveted everyday items like the radio-phono-combo ironically nicknamed ‘Snow White’s Coffin’ (1956, below) will be on display alongside new discoveries and rare objects such as Luigi Colani’s sculptural loop chair ‘Poly-COR’ (1968, below).
The exhibition introduces important figures including Dieter Rams, Egon Eiermann, Rudolf Horn, and Margarete Jahny while also highlighting the role of design schools and the Bauhaus legacy. Its broad panorama of design from the two Germanies illustrates how closely intertwined design and history, everyday culture and world politics were in Germany during the Cold War period.
The exhibition begins with immersive installations allowing visitors to experience the role of design in East and West Germany.
The two new states sought to establish their identities by designing new coats of arms, currencies, passports, and symbols – right down to the stylized figures in pedestrian crossing signals. At the same time, objects like Peter Ghyczy’s ‘Garden Egg Chair’ (1968) illustrate that the division between East and West Germany was not nearly as strict as it often appears: the futuristic chair was manufactured in almost exactly the same form on both sides of the border.
The exhibition also looks at German design before the Second World War, since many German designers were former Bauhaus students.
This introduction is followed by a chronological narrative of East and West German design history.
Everyday objects like the kitchen wall clock designed by Max Bill (1956) or Klaus Kunis’s watering can (ca. 1960) reflected the growing popularity of modern design. In both East and West, several design schools were revived or established in order to train the young designers that industry needed so urgently. Milestones in this context include the revival of the Leipzig Trade Fair in 1946, aimed at boosting East Germany’s export economy, and the West German pavilion designed by Sep Ruf and Egon Eiermann for the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair.
The construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 finally enforced a hard border. The rivalry between the two political systems took hold in design, too. In West Germany, design came to be an important factor in a consumer society that coveted the latest furniture and automobiles as status symbols. The minimalist electrical appliances designed by Dieter Rams for the Braun company offer evidence of an increased understanding of quality and design culture.
The concept of corporate identity also gained currency, as is illustrated by two iconic designs from 1972: Doris Casse-Schlüter’s red lips logo for the city of Bonn, then the capital of West Germany, and Otl Aicher’s pictograms for the Summer Olympics in Munich. In the automobile industry, these changes could be seen in the designs for Porsche – which only a fraction of the population could afford – whose reduced lines symbolized the perfect marriage of aesthetics and engineering. True design ‘Made in Germany’.
In East Germany, the design was centrally regulated as part of the socialist planned economy. A separate government office – the Office of Industrial Design – ensured that it supplied the wider population with affordable products while boosting the competitiveness of East German industries. Large-panel system-building made it possible to provide housing on a large scale. The ‘MDW-Einbauwand’ (1968) developed by Rudolf Horn for the Deutsche Werkstätten company proved extremely popular; its versatile modular storage units were soon to be found in private interiors all over East Germany. In public spaces, too, design had an important role to play.
Thanks to West German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s initiative to normalise relations between the two German states, the 1970s saw a rapprochement between East and West that culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Rudolf Horn and Eberhardt Wüstner, MDW-Montagemöbel, 1967, Archiv Rudolf Horn, Foto: Friedrich Weimer, Dresden
Installation view ‘German Design 1949–1989: Two countries, one history’ © Vitra Design Museum. Photo: Ludger Paffrath © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021
Design on both sides of the border reflected a growing critical awareness fuelled by events such as the 1973 oil crisis. The East German economy began to decline, but its designers proved inventive. Karl Clauss Dietel and Lutz Rudolph, for example, designed the ‘Mokick S50’ motorcycle (1967–74) on a modular principle that made it easy and inexpensive to repair. In East Berlin, design and subculture met in a vibrant scene whose output in fashion, photography, ceramics, and decorative accessories expressed a new aesthetic of the everyday that was beyond the reach of industrialised planning. One of the last great projects launched by the East German government was a computer known as ‘PC 1715’ and produced by the stateowned company Robotron (1985). It was reserved exclusively for state-owned companies, government authorities, and universities.
Installation ‘German Design 1949–1989: Two countries, one history’ © Vitra Design Museum, Photo: Ludger Paffrath © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021
While West Germany did not emerge unscathed from the economic upheavals of the 1970s, its leadership role in international industrial design remained intact. The Volkswagen Golf, for example, launched in 1974, reflected a growing demand for small, efficient automobiles, and in the early 1980s, Steve Jobs asked Hartmut Esslinger and the German agency frogdesign to design one of the first Apple computers. During the same period, art-oriented and experimental tendencies gained importance in West Germany, paralleling developments in the East. Groups like Pentagon, Ginbande, and Kunstflug as well as design galleries and experimental shows influenced the development of a ‘New German Design’ drawing on art, punk, and kitsch. Political détente gradually led to exchange and collaboration in design, too. Twin exhibitions featuring design from the other Germany took place in East Berlin in 1984/85 and in Stuttgart in 1988.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, large parts of East German industrial production were phased out, and many East German household names simply vanished.
Installation view ‘German Design 1949–1989: Two countries, one history’ © Vitra Design Museum. Photo: Ludger Paffrath © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021
The exhibition, by the Vitra Design Museum, the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, and the Wüstenrot Foundation, runs until 5 September 2021 at Vitra Design Museum. The show will travel to the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (15.10.2021–20.02.2022). The exhibition and its international tour are supported by the Federal Foreign Office.
If you cannot make to Weil am Rhein nor Dresden, here is a virtual tour presented by the exhibition curators.
