1919 The first German republic and the state-run Bauhaus are established in Weimar. Founding director Walter Gropius sets up his academy in the Werkstätten tradition. – Along with the Kaiser and the German Reich, the old values have also been swept away. Censorship has been abolished. Feelings are mixed – a new awakening takes place against the backdrop of an apocalyptic mood. Dance fever breaks out in Berlin. The magazine Dada shocks the citizenry.

1920 Gropius designs the cubic F 51 chair for his director’s office at the Bauhaus – tantamount to a manifesto of interior design. Josef Albers and Marcel Breuer join the Bauhaus, which acts like a magnet for young, futurehungry artists. Expressionist Johannes Itten, now a master at the Bauhaus, brings 15 female students with him from Vienna. Abstract carpets are produced in the weaving mill. – Jazz rhythms and pageboys are all the rage. A military putsch is warded off through a general strike. The young, deeply cleft democracy is left reeling. – In the Expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, in which light and scenery play leading roles, there is not a right angle in sight.

 

1921 Dutch architect Theo van Doesburg, co-founder of the artists’ group “de Stijl”, holds guest lectures for the Bauhaus, to which the formal ascetic contributes vital impulses. Reduction to essentials is now the order of the day. The Bauhaus sees itself as a laboratory for industry and endeavours to develop “types” exemplifying whole groups of products

 

1922 The magazine die form published by the Werkbund is the ancestor of all design magazines. – In his book Die Schöne Wohnung (The Dwelling Beautiful), Hermann Muthesius shows models for interiors in Werkstätten style. The book soon attains the status of required reading for interior designers and is brought out more than a dozen times until the end of the 1960s, frequently in completely revised editions. – The Schauburg opens in Cologne, a large cinema like the ones that will soon spring up in all the major cities.

 

1923 The model home “Am Horn”, with which the Bauhaus presents its work for the first time, is an experiment in “Neues Wohnen”, New Design for Living. The furnishings are based on concepts in which mechanics and modularity play an important role, such as in the innovative children’s room by Alma Buscher. But the truly sensational aspect of the show is the shocking simplicity of the interiors. – In Hamburg Karl Schneider designs Villa Michaelsen, an early work of the “Neues Bauen” (New Building) and “Offenes Wohnen” (Open Living) movements. – Currency depreciation reaches a climax. Bread distribution begins. The first entertainment show is broadcast on the radio.

 

1924 The economy begins to recover. Berlin becomes the world’s cultural capital. – Form ohne Ornament (Form Without Ornament) is the title of a touring exhibition of the German Werkbund, which provides the Modernists with a motto. – Marianne Brandt revolutionizes the dining table with her ornament-free Tee-Extrakt-Kännchen (Tea Extract Pot). – Now ennobled as the “Bauhaus Lamp”, the WA 24, a joint work by Carl J. Jucker and Wilhelm Wagenfeld, is one of the first products to become a type, but fails to catch on immediately. – The Georgsgarten colony is established in Celle. Its architect, Otto Haesler, anticipating Zeilenbau (linear building), already incorporates combined living/dining rooms and small kitchen niches that will become the model for the functional Frankfurt Kitchen of 1926.

 

1925 In the B3 tubular steel easychair designed by Marcel Breuer, which is reduced like a bicycle to a simple frame, the aimed-for fusion of industrial and creative forces finds incisive expression. – Socialist Ernst May, now chief city planner for Frankfurt, heads up the most ambitious residential project of classical Modernism. Well over 10,000 apartments are built, for which Ferdinand Kramer develops simple type-based modular furniture. The Frankfurt Bed, which can be tilted up into the wall during the day, is one of his space-saving accomplishments. In the midst of the “New Frankfurt”, which has now become a further avant-garde mecca, the Braun company erects its new factory. – Public residential building projects get underway. In the suburb of Britz, the first large residential development in green surroundings is built according to plans by Bruno Taut. Two years later, Taut presents his ideas on furnishings in the book Ein Wohnhaus (A House to Live In), including a dining table in which a black rubber coating replaces the white tablecloth. – Exhibitions reflect the spirit of the times. In Dresden the theme is Wohnung und Siedlung (House and Housing Development), one of the hot topics of the day. Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) in Mannheim shows the crystal-clear realism that has taken shape in Germany. The title becomes a headline for Modernism. The Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in Paris gives the Art Deco style its name.

 

1926 The Bauhaus moves to Dessau into a new building that approaches quite closely the ideal of a functionalist total work of art. The event is lent drama by, for example, the use of the new tubular steel furniture, tangible symbols of the anti-cosiness aesthetic. The school encompasses seven master studios in which a cool ambience is displayed for the benefit of visiting journalists. Favourite words bandied about by the domestic rebels are “air” and “light”. These qualities are achieved through large windows and the monochrome white of the walls, which make the rooms seem all the emptier. – The magazines bauhaus and Das Neue Frankfurt become mouthpieces and discussion forums for the movement. – In Weimar Erich Dieckmann continues to design modern furnishings at the ex-Bauhaus, now dubbed the Bauhochschule (University of Architecture). – Mart Stam from the Netherlands, later a guest lecturer at the Bauhaus, invents the Freischwinger, or cantilevered chair, a furniture genre that will become a major hit the following year with Mies van der Rohe’s MR 10 easychair. – Margarete Schütte Lihotzky rationalizes cooking in her Frankfurt Kitchen. It becomes the prototype for all compact linear kitchens. – Functionalism, writes Hermann Muthesius in the second edition of his book Die Schöne Wohnung (The Dwelling Beautiful) is, as Jugendstil before it, merely an “eccentric” intermezzo. – In Europe Charleston fever rages. The “Roaring 20s” are off to a wild start.

 

1927 The model housing development in Stuttgart-Weissenhof attracts an array of young architects who represent “Neues Wohnen”, the new style of domesticity, including Josef Frank, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Hans Scharoun and Mart Stam. A radical break with all that has gone before, their domestic concepts seem more uniform than they actually are. Although, or perhaps precisely because, the project is just as controversial as the Bauhaus, it gives the modern movement a decided push. – Huge apartment blocks are built in Hamburg, such as the Heidburg, whose 470 units are decorated by architect Karl Schneider. In Hamburg’s Gewerkschaftshaus (Union House), the exhibition Neues Wohnen shows how existing furnishings can be transformed to “look modern”, i.e. freed of ornament. The reform of domesticity and living has made inroads into society under the Social Democrats, even though workers often take a sceptical view of the proposed changes. – WK brings the first wall unit system onto the market with its modular furniture program Aufbaumöbel. The furniture can be purchased piece by piece. A wall unit that costs around 300 marks is a major purchase for a working-class family earning a maximum of 100 marks per month. – Berlin theatre director Erwin Piscator, who turns performances into media spectacles drawing on the assistance of constructivist artist László Moholy-Nagy, has Marcel Breuer redecorate his apartment. The provocatively barren interior attracts tremendous attention in the press. – The young English artist Francis Bacon travels to Berlin to experience the libertine lifestyle there first-hand and sets off a tubular furniture mania upon his return to London.

 

1928 The Frankfurter Register is published. This catalogue of products exemplifying the “new objectivity” is a treasure trove for architects. The first edition shows lamps by Christian Dell. – The Opel “Rocket Car” breaks
speed records at the Avus track in Berlin.

 

1929 The German pavilion at the World Exposition in Barcelona, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and furnished with his own designs, declares Neue Sachlichkeit as the official style of the republic. – In Frankfurt the exhibition The Chair shows modern seating from various countries. – The Neue Typografie is exhibited in Magdeburg. There is no need to visit a museum to see it, however: clear-cut typefaces are now also being used in advertising. Frankfurt graphic artist Robert Michel, for example, designs typefaces for Esso and Shell that lend the companies a clear, streamlined corporate style.– Befreites Wohnen (Liberated Living) by  Siegfried Giedion is published – yet another educational reference work in design. – At an international conference in Frankfurt, attendees discuss “Living at Subsistence Level”. – The first Cologne Furniture Fair is held in the new trade fair building. – The stock market crash in New York plunges the world into an economic crisis.

 

1930 The Bauhaustapeten (Bauhaus Wallpapers) are the first products to be branded with the school’s name. – Two modernists put their designs on the market: Otto Haesler with celler volks-möbeln (celle folk furniture) and Karl Schneider with Typenmöbeln (type-based furniture). – Bruno Paul develops the Wachsende Wohnung (Growing Home), another additive furniture system. – The last scene of the musical film Die Drei von der Tankstelle (Three Good Friends) takes place in a corporate headquarters office that bears all the marks of the Neue Sachlichkeit. The actual model used for the film is the new Shell Building in Berlin.

 

1931 The completely revised edition of Die Schöne Wohnung is a panorama of “Neues Wohnen” (New Design for Living). – Neue Sachlichkeit reaches its zenith – and department store shelves. Porcelain dishware such as the service 1382 by Hermann Gretsch and Urbino by Trude Petri show that the new style has also found a place on the dining table. Clarity is the code for progress. – A Jewish synagogue is built in Plauen in the style of the “Neues Bauen” (New Building).

 

1932 Six million Germans are out of work. The economic and political situation comes to a head. – At the Berlin summer show Sonne, Luft und Haus für alle (Sun, Air and House for Everyone) 24 architects present entries in the competition Das wachsende Haus (The Growing House), small-format model homes that can be expanded. Represented are Erich Mendelsohn, Hans Scharoun and Egon Eiermann. – The exhibition Architecture: International Exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art introduces German functionalism on US shores.