Young entrepreneur Johannes Wagner had plenty of experience in the industry from working in his father’s fireplace company and knew that innovative ideas were in short supply there. Furniture-maker and design missionary Helmut Lübke, a seasoned adviser and distant relative of Wagner’s, finally gave him the crucial tip: Hamburg designer Peter Maly was just the right man to take up the banner of reform in this tradition-mired terrain. The first product of their collaboration, a set of fireplace tools made of unusual materials which was as streamlined as it was practical, already set new standards. For example, a new name had to be invented for the “Holzlege”, a stage-like place to stack logs, since no such thing had existed until then. Maly not only inaugurated a whole new type and catapulted one of the last untouched product areas into the contemporary design empyrean; he also became the conceptual mentor of a successful start-up. Encouraged by this triumph, the company set out to rethink the fireplace itself. What resulted was a fireplace system dubbed Balance, with which the Bauhaus finally arrived at the hearthside. Since the orientation toward design was throwing up so many sparks, Wagner proceeded to seek the cooperation of additional external designers, such as Carsten Gollnick and Michael Sieger. The latter conceived the Plaza series, closed, block-shaped fireplaces without chimney connections that can be positioned anywhere. From Fried Ulber came additional useful and remarkable fireplace utensils made of stainless steel, such as the Z-Tisch, a table that can be transformed at a touch into a newspaper stand or log shelf. The company has launched a new product line of late – garden furniture, once again enlisting Maly’s assistance in the birthing process. This range is to be carried forward with the strongly Bauhaus- inspired series Springtime by Matthias Demacker.