The Authority of Everyday Objects: A Cultural History of West German Industrial Design

Part of the series: WEIMAR AND NOW: GERMAN CULTURAL CRITICISM (Edward Dimendberg, Martin Jay, and Anton Kaes, General Editors)

"Even the humblest material artefact, which is the product and symbol of a particular civilization, is an emissary of the culture out of which it comes."
T. S. Eliot, Notes Toward the Definition of Culture

From the Werkbund to the Bauhaus to Braun, from furniture to automobiles to consumer appliances, twentieth-century industrial design is closely associated with Germany. In this pathbreaking study, Paul Betts brings to light the crucial role that design played in building a progressive West German industrial culture atop the charred remains of the past. The Authority of Everyday Objects details how the postwar period gave rise to a new design culture comprising a sprawling network of diverse interest groups–including the state and industry, architects and designers, consumer groups and museums, as well as publicists and women's organizations–who all identified industrial design as a vital means of economic recovery, social reform, and even moral regeneration. These cultural battles took on heightened importance precisely because the stakes were nothing less than the very shape and significance of West German domestic modernity. Betts tells the rich and far-reaching story of how and why commodity aesthetics became a focal point for fashioning a certain West German cultural identity. This book is situated at the very crossroads of German industry and aesthetics, Cold War politics and international modernism, institutional life and visual culture.

Contents

List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi

Introduction. Design, the Cold War, and West German Culture 1

1. Re-Enchanting the Commodity: Nazi Modernism Reconsidered 23

2. The Conscience of the Nation: The New German Werkbund 73

3. The Nierentisch Nemesis: The Promise and Peril of Organic Design 109

4. Design and Its Discontents: The Ulm Institute of Design 139

5. Design, Liberalism, and the State: The German Design Council 178

6. Coming in from the Cold: Design and Domesticity 212

Conclusion. Memory and Materialism: The Return of History as Design 249

Notes 265
Bibliography 319
Index 339