1955 At the Funkausstellung (Radio Exhibition) in Düsseldorf, the Braun company presents its new devices, designed with help from Ulm. The crystal- clear forms betray a spiritual kinship with the Bauhaus and make the common “radio furniture” look hopelessly old-fashioned. The modular trade fair stand, designed by Otl Aicher to impress, causes a sensation. A basic idea behind Braun’s strategy is to build a product range that goes with modern-day furniture. This is why the company enters into a liaison withthe German-American furniture maker Knoll International. – Architect Georg Leowald creates the first “designer chairs” for Wilkhahn. – The Behr furniture series Zerlegbar (Take-Apart, known as BMZ for short – Behr Möbel Zerlegbar) is one of the early wall unit systems, and one of the bestselling. A German innovation catches on. – At the documenta 1 art exhibition in Kassel, a city that was heavily bombed in the war, people can view abstract art in the original, with the name Picasso as derogatory code word. The newly gained freedom of expression is practiced en masse in kidney- shaped tables, shell chairs and slanted chair legs. Even Thonet lends its chairs and tables the popular expressionist touch. – Peter Raacke develops cubic combi-stoves, forerunners of the appliances that will become standard in fitted kitchens.

 

1956 The friendship between Philip Rosenthal and Erwin Braun gives rise to a circle of like-minded manufacturers who start a design initiative, among them Knoll International, Rasch and WMF. One of their major triumphs is the exhibition form, farbe, fertigung (form, colour, fabrication), which tours Germany for three years, confronting a quarter of a million visitors with exemplary design. – The phonograph combination SK 4, which Hans Gugelot develops for Braun, is the first radio made of metal, with a see-through cover, and makes just as shocking an impression as Marcel Breuer’s tubular steel furniture three decades before. The scandalously naked device ushers in a new era in both industrial and domestic design. – Also to Gugelot’s credit, the trailblazing M 125 wall unit system, which he spent six years fine-tuning, goes into production in a completely revised form at a new Bofinger plant. – In Kronberg, Otto Zapf and Dieter Rams, interior designer at Braun for the past two years, are busy brooding over new furniture ideas. – The exhibition Künstlerisches Schaffen, Industrielles Gestalten (Creative Work, Industrial Design) in Osnabrück, which is opened by German President Theodor Heuss, displays modern art against a backdrop of abstract
wallpapers made by Rasch.

 

1957 Numerous modernist projects are undertaken in the adolescent years of the republic. The Interbau show in West Berlin features a model housing development in the new Hansa quarter for which a circle of international architects were recruited, among them Alvar Aalto, Walter Gropius and Oskar Niemeyer. In the city on the front lines of the Cold War, the elaborate event is also a boastful gesture on the part of the West. Just like back in 1901 at Darmstadt’s Mathildenhöhe and 1927 in Stuttgart- Weissenhof, the model homes are the true attraction for visitors. In 60 examples of ideal interior decoration and furnishings, the architects have packed the homes full of modern-day furniture, in which the Scandinavians set the pace and plenty of Braun appliances are on view. Herbert Hirche, himself a Braun designer and architect at Interbau, is the man behind this optimal form of marketing, which made Braun famous all over the world. – The model KM 3 from Braun becomes the mother of all kitchen appliances. – Peter Raacke brings the new systematic approach to the world of office furniture with his Zeitgewinn (Time Gain) program. – The race to outer space is launched with the Russian Sputnik.

 

1958 Egon Eiermann’s glass pavilion at the World Exposition in Brussels is a showcase of the new dawn of German design. Just three decades after Barcelona, functional minimalism is once again the official style of the German state. – Wilhelm Braun-Feldweg is appointed Professor of Industrial Design in Berlin, which he transforms into a further hotbed of Neo-Functionalism. – Teenage frenzies following rock’n’roll films and concerts mark the beginning of the era of youthful rebellion in West Germany.

 

1959 120,000 copies of a completely revised version of Die Schöne Wohnung are sold by 1963 in four editions. Featured are numerous wall unit and shelf systems, but also an amazing variety of children’s rooms. – Students at the Ulm Academy put the analytical curriculum into practice in their dissertations. While Hans “Nick” Roericht develops the first functional dishware, stackable of course, Herbert Lindinger intellectually dissects the radio. His “building block concept” ultimately engenders Braun’s studio 2, the archetypical stereo system. – Peter Raacke’s sleek, straight-lined silverware mono-a is tantamount to a manifesto against the contemporary wave of culinary overindulgence. – Unemployment is virtually unknown, and the phrase “standard of living” makes sense for the first time when applied to normal everyday consumers. The “motorized Biedermeier” populace surround themselves with furnishings in the weighty, ornately decorated style known as “Gelsenkirchener Barock”. Ponderous historicizing “Stilmöbel” furniture dominates the catalogues of the big mail-order firms.

 

1960 The Rosenthal Studio House in Nuremberg is a test run for the world’s first designer chain store. – In Hamburg the magazine Schöner Wohnen comes out, the first journal devoted exclusively to the domestic  environment, whose name, roughly translatable as “Better Homes”, becomes part of the vernacular. Market researchers soon count over two million readers. One of the most popular columns is Peter Maly’s Skizzenbuch (Sketchbook), in which the young interior designer solves readers’ furnishing dilemmas. – The Bauhaus Archive is established on the Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt. – Copenhagen is the unofficial design capital of the world.

 

1961 Dieter Rams is named head of design at Braun. The company, along with the department under his charge and he himself will become legendary. Rams belongs to the generation of war children whose formative years took place during the second period of Modernism and who has left his mark on the image of German design up until the present day. This cohort also includes such prominent personalities as Klaus Franck, Peter Maly, Ulf Moritz, Peter Raacke, Hans “Nick” Roericht and mavericks like Luigi Colani. – The Berlin Wall is also something new to the world.

 

1962 In Italy, Dino Gavina reissues Marcel Breuer’s tubular steel chair B 3 as Wassily and declares it a “classic”. – Refrigerators and washing machines now take the form of straight-edged cubes. – Slick, smooth-lined cars such as the BMW 1500, the compact Opel Kadett or the Mercedes-Benz 230 SL the following year demonstrate that even this key industry is searching for the kind of “pure” form inaugurated in Ulm.

 

1963 The chancellor’s bungalow in Bonn, a glass box created by architect Sep Ruf, is furnished by Herta-Maria Witzemann. Just as was the case one year before when the Neue Nationalgalerie by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe opened in Berlin, the West German republic is once again cloaking itself in an immaculate modern image. Chancellors from Ludwig Erhard to Helmut Kohl make their homes in this purist ambience, which veritably compels forward-looking thinking. – The Auschwitz trials begin in Frankfurt. – The visit of US President John F. Kennedy to West Berlin is akin to a triumphal procession.

 

1964 Among the much-admired innovations on display at the Cologne Furniture Fair are the Bofinger Chair and the combination sofa set Conseta from COR, a seating group of heretofore unimagined simplicity and variability. – The Ruhr University is built in Bochum, a concrete machine for learning and one of the biggest construction projects in West Germany. The libraries are outfitted with the brand-new modular shelving system 606 by Dieter Rams. – The song I Want to Hold Your Hand by the Beatles storms the US charts. The pop revolution goes global.

 

1965 The exhibition Good Form in London, intended to boost exports, demonstrates the edge the West Germans have gained in the design realm. Some visitors, however, are struck by the strange contrast between the cultivated clarity of the exhibits and the wholly different look of the surrounding world. Their standards have once again started coming apart at the seams. From London, now the capital of pop, come new cultural role models.