Masterpieces of
German
Design
Thomas Berg
Peter Behrens Materials: Frame of solid oak, stained dark brown;
wickerwork seat
Measurements: 97.5cm high
Wertheim dining room chair, 1902 Manufacturer: Probably manufactured in the workshops
of A Wertheim’s department store, Berlin (1902–c. 1910)
In 1902, the Berlin department store of A Wertheim level of education are to be given the opportunity napkins to the tableware, glasses and cutlery – was
organized its first sales exhibition of ‘Moderne of experiencing the simple unity of these modern designed to match, their forms and decorations
Wohnungs-Kunst’, or ‘Modern Art of Home-living’, rooms, of seeing the practical usefulness of the based on a strictly geometric grid of rectangles and
arranged by architect Curt Stoeving. The Wertheim pieces of furniture and of buying such items in the squares. However, this dining room appeared simpler,
department store building had been built in 1896/97 best quality at reasonable prices.’ For the first time in less luxurious than Behrens’s own in Darmstadt – for
on Leipziger Strasse by famous architect Alfred Germany, complete sets of interior decoration in the one thing because the different items were meant
Messel. new ‘modern’ style were presented to the public in to be reasonably priced (by the end of 1902 the
At the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, due a department store, whilst interior furnishings had complete dining room furniture had been sold out five
to its ultramodern organization and design, it was previously only been shown at art exhibitions and in times over) and were designed for mass production.
regarded as a major architectural and cultural specialized commercial art galleries, making them Another reason for their simplicity was Behrens’s own
attraction. Architects and interior designers Patriz accessible only to a privileged few. increasing departure from the eccentric, symbol-laden
Huber, Mackay Hugh Baillie-Scott, Ludwig Paul Of all the interiors shown, the dining room Art Nouveau style and the fact that he had developed
Troost, Arno Körnig, August Endell, Sepp Kaiser, designed by Peter Behrens (1868–1940) caused the a functional, tectonic formal vocabulary based on
Richard Riemerschmid, Peter Behrens, Paul Schultze- greatest stir among contemporary viewers and critics. simple geometric forms. Six years later, in 1908, his
Naumburg and Thorwald Jørgensen created a total of Like the dining room in his own house (part of the Wertheim dining room was again shown, unchanged,
eleven model rooms for this show, arranged inside Art Nouveau Mathildenhöhe ensemble in Darmstadt) as part of the department store’s third sales exhibition
the department store to appear like two typical, Behrens had designed the year before, his Wertheim of modern home furnishings. It had lost nothing of its
fully decorated and furnished Berlin flats. Stoeving dining room was a Gesamtkunstwerk, a total work modernity.
formulated the aim of the exhibition in the journal of art. Everything in it – from the walls and ceilings,
Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration: ‘Viewers of every the furniture and lamps, the carpet, table cloth and
Dining room installation
at the Wertheim department
store, 1902
1902 · Behrens 34 | 3
Peter Behrens Electric table fan, 1908
Materials: varnished cast iron foot and casing, with polished
Tombak alloy propeller and polished brass wire-basket guard
Measurements: 29 cm height
Manufacturer: Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG),
Berlin (1908–?)
The origins of the aeg go back to the year 1882, when From 1907 Behrens redesigned a large part of the com-
Emil Rathenau obtained the licence for producing pany’s range of products, unifying them in terms of
Thomas Alva Edison’s incandescent lighting system form and style. He freed the electrical appliances from
from the Compagnie Continentale Edison and founded all historicist, purely decorative elements and – by
the ‘Deutsche Edison-Gesellschaft für angewandte applying artistic abstraction – concentrated instead
Elektricität’, the ‘German Edison Society for Applied on good proportions and forms with a view to modern,
Electricity’, in Berlin. In 1887 this society was recon- rationalized industrial production procedures.
stituted as the aeg, a rapidly expanding shareholder In 1907 Behrens first successfully revised aeg’s
company, which soon extended its production to all range of arc lamps and in 1908 turned to redesigning
areas of electrical applications. The firm started with the company’s range of fans. He had all the casings,
six workers/employees in 1882. By 1907 it already feet, wall and ceiling fixtures of the fans he designed
employed over 30,000 workers and other staff, and by coated with dark green varnish, and merely accen-
1912 more than twice this number. In a mattr of only tuated their functional forms of largely geometric
thirty years, the aeg thus became a huge, interna- bodies with polished strips of Tombak or a few square
tionally active industrial manufacturer of electrical or round ornamental inlays. Combining all this with
machinery, systems and appliances. shining propellers and wire-basket guards, both of
At the beginning of the 20th century few houses polished brass, Behrens thus created a novel type of
had electricity. Most people still used gas lights and industrial aesthetic, which lent his range of aeg fans
candles to light their homes, and the development of and other products their unique character and identi-
electric stoves and household appliances was still in its fied them as aeg products, distinguishing them from
infancy. However, competition in this segment of the those of other companies. The visible functionality
economy was strong and, in engaging Peter Behrens, and modernity of the electrical appliances Behrens
the aeg hoped to distinguish itself and its products designed for aeg up until 1914, is only equalled by
from its competitors and their products both formally the lamps designed much later in the Bauhaus Dessau
and functionally, thus gaining a competitive edge. metal workshop for industrial production.
aeg poster stamp, c.1908
34 | 5
Lucian Bernhard Materials: Colour lithograph
Measurements: 45.5 x 64cm
Manufacturers: Hollerbaum & Schmidt
Posters for Bosch, 1914 GmbH, Berlin (printing) / Werkstätte
für Feinmechanik und Elektrotechnik
Robert Bosch, Stuttgart (client)
Small Bosch poster, c.1913
The poster Lucian Bernhard (1883–1972) designed The year after, in 1887, he modified a non-patented Lucian Bernhard (born in Cannstatt near Stuttgart had prevailed until then and put the product itself
for Bosch in 1913/14 is regarded as one of the most magneto, produced by the Deutz machine-building in 1883 as Emil Kahn) had moved to Berlin in 1901 in the centre. Clearly represented products and a
important examples of early modern billboard factory and turned it into his first commercial success. – just eighteen years old. Here he got to know the focus on branding characterized, and became the
advertising. On a bright orange background, it shows The revised low-voltage magneto he developed cartoonist and poster designer Edmund Edel who identifying feature of, the modern advertising poster.
a Bosch sparking plug at the moment of ignition, produced electric sparks, which ignited the gas accepted him as an apprentice. In 1903 Bernhard Bernhard was not only the most prominent and
with the brand name bosch in blue capital letters, mixture inside a stationary combustion engine. In started designing advertisements and advertising most progressive representative of this new style of
and emphasized by a blue framing line around the 1897 Bosch finally succeeded in fitting the petrol posters on his own. At about that time, he met commercial art, but also a successful typographer,
product against the orange background. Similar to engine of a tricycle with one such magneto and thus ‘publicity counsellor’ Ernst Growald, who put him in architect and designer. In 1922, he was appointed to a
the way they are drawn in comic strips, the sparks solved one of the biggest problems of the emerging touch with the reputable Berlin printers Hollerbaum professorship for commercial art at the school of the
of the sparking plug convey a sense of power and automobile industry. Once Bosch engineer Gottlob & Schmidt. This firm succeeded in contracting a Berlin Kunstgewerbemuseum (museum of arts and
dynamics. The advertised product and the name of the Honold had developed a high-voltage magneto (in number of leading Berlin-based commercial artists, crafts). The following year he emigrated to the United
manufacturer form a visual unity and thus enter the 1901/02), it became possible to construct high- introducing them to potential customers – thus States and established a studio for commercial art and
subconscious of the viewer as inseparably linked. speed petrol engines. In 1913, Bosch put the first acting as an advertising agency avant la lettre. From interior design in New York.
In 1886 Robert Bosch established his Robert Bosch complete electric system for automobiles on the 1905 the city of Berlin became a major centre of a
limited company in Stuttgart as a small ‘workshop market. It consisted of a magneto with sparking plugs, new style of poster art, which departed from the
for precision mechanics and electrical engineering’. headlights, a dynamo and a regulator switch . rather narrative, decorative and painterly style that
1914 · Bernhard 34 | 7
Dorothée Maurer-Becker
UtenSilo wall storage unit, 1969
Materials: acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (abs), metal
Measurements: 68 cm high, 51 cm wide
(larger version: 87 cm high, 66 cm wide)
Plank Collezioni srl, Ora/Italien (ab 2008)
Manufacturer: Design M, Munich, Germany
(reissued in 2000: Vitra, Weil am Rhein, Germany)
Dorothée Maurer-Becker studied languages and then Maurer-Becker had executed in the 1960s. With their
lived for a time in London and Paris, before moving differently shaped and sized containers, and their
to California in 1960. She eventually returned to numerous metal hooks and clips, the Uten. Silo i and
Germany in 1963 with her husband, the well-known Uten.Silo ii were intended to be used as organizers in
lighting designer Ingo Maurer (b.1932), and three kitchens, bathrooms, offices or children’s bedrooms.
years later they established Design M, a design and These highly useful products were also marketed
manufacturing company based in Munich. Although under the name Wall-All, while another related
Ingo Maurer was responsible for the majority of design for a smaller organizer, known as the Wall-
the designs produced by this enterprise, Maurer- All iii, was manufactured by Format Sales in the
Becker also created a number of innovative products, United States. Design M produced other household
including her iconic Uten.Silo i wall-mounted products in colourful abs, including some stylish
organiser from 1969. The following year, she designed yellow coat hangers designed by Ingo Mauer in 1968.
a smaller version of this stylish ‘wall tidy’ known The company’s innovative and modish designs in
as the Uten.Silo ii, which was similarly produced shiny, durable thermoplastic not only captured the
from two interlocking panels of injection-moulded optimistic spirit of the times, but perfectly suited the
abs. These striking plastic storage units were increasingly casual lifestyle of the 1960s.
based on earlier experimental wooden designs that
Ingo Maurer, plastic clothes
hanger for M Design, 1968
1969 · Maurer 34 | 9
Konstantin Grcic Materials: Polybutylene terephthalate (pbt)
Measurements: 82 cm high, 51 cm wide, 55 cm deep
Manufacturer: Plank, Ora, Italy
myto Model 1207-20
cantilever chair, 2008
In late 2006, basf commissioned the celebrated first time in October 2007 at the plastics industry’s
German industrial designer, Konstantin Grcic, to largest trade exhibition, the K Fair in Düsseldorf, it
come up with a new application or product using this caused a complete sensation. This reaction was an
recently invented and highly durable polymer. Grcic acknowledgement both of its materials innovation
had previously designed the award-winning Miura and its striking, faceted form that gives the design
stackable stool (2005) in reinforced polypropylene for a strongly masculine and high-tech look, almost
the Italian furniture manufacturer Plank. As a designer reminiscent of an f-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter. The
he therefore already had a good understanding of the main concept behind the chair is a supporting frame
formal and structural potential of advanced polymers that seamlessly dissolves into a mesh-like, perforated
and available moulding techniques. Working closely seat section. With its high flow rate and excellent
with the engineers and technicians at basf and strength, the Ultradur thermoplastic also permits an
Plank, Grcic spent several months refining a design elegant transition from the thickest parts of the chair
for a new stacking chair – research and development to its thinnest cross-sections. Virtually indestructible,
time that proved wholly justified with the resulting the myto has excellent impact resistance, and can be
product constituting a significant benchmark in mass-produced in high volumes thanks to its logical,
both plastics moulding technology and furniture process-driven design and the remarkable ‘flowability’
design. When the fully recyclable myto cantilevered of its polymeric material.
monobloc chair was eventually presented for the
2008 · Grcic 34 | 11
Design
Target audience:
Fans of German engineering
& ‘German Quality’
Design students
Design History students &
institutions
Industrial designers
Engineers & engineering students
Collectors & dealers of design
artifacts
Masterpieces of From Bauhaus to our house
Masterpieces of German Design is the first of a series of
German Design books dedicated to the national design outputs of specific
Thomas Berg countries. Celebrating the remarkable contribution of
Germany to the world of manufactured products, this
publication traces the twists and turns of German design
Flexi-cover with flaps from Jugendstil and the Bauhaus to Postwar and Late
Format: 27 × 21 cm (10 ⅝ × 8 ¼ in.)
Modern, and beyond.
256 pages, 300 illustrations
Recommended Retail Price:
£24.95 | €29.95 | us $45.00 Functional form
Single Language text Beautifully illustrated, this book features one hundred
English edition – isbn 978-1-906863-02-9 landmark German designs, each one being accompanied
French edition – isbn 978-906863-26-5 by authoritative descriptive information and an in-depth
German edition – isbn 978-1-906863-13-5 explanatory text. The highly varied selection of objects
D.A.P. page 80
ranges from an early Pfaff sewing machine to the gull-
October 2010 wing Mercedes-Benz 300 SL to Konstantin Grcic’s recent
MYTO chair.
About the author
Thomas Berg studied art history in Bonn. Later From AEG to Zeppelin
he became an independent art dealer and As well as an informative introductory essay, Masterpieces
antiquarian in the field of 20th century design
and decorative art. In addition, he pursued
of German Design also features a useful timeline, which
research in the area of design history and has contextualizes the selected designs in relation to
contributed to numerous publications and historical events. A very cool book providing a fresh new
catalogues on both the design and decorative take on national characteristics in design.
art of the 20th century.
