It was the sole comprehensive product program to come out of the famed Academy of Art and Design in Ulm, and, what’s more, the only item that has been in production without interruption since its inception in 1928. This lasting success was by no means a sure thing for the person who initiated the program. Wallpaper manufacturer Emil Rasch, who originally came up with idea for the Bauhaus Wallpaper project, took the marketing into his own hands after the retail branch had responded with extreme reserve to the severe graphic wall design he was proposing. He placed ads that formed the key to the final breakthrough, providing an example, even after 1933, alongside A rzberg, Pott and others, for the partial survival of the “Neue Sachlichkeit” (New Objectivity) during the Nazi era. Following the Second World War, when Modernism was helping to lend the young West Germany an identity, Rasch continued to pursue his progressive line. He produced artists’ wallpapers and joined forces with a dozen like-minded manufacturers, including Braun and Rosenthal, to propagate “good form”. Among the most popular products of the 1950s were the “abstract” patterns typical of the time that came from the pen of English designer Lucienne Day. Rasch continued to put the “zeitgeist“ up on walls everywhere throughout the 1960s and 70s. The Avantgarde collection by graphic artist Klaus Dombrowski of Essen took its cue from American Pop Art, introducing large-scale patterns into the German home. In the late 1980s Rasch finally made the design wave just part of the furniture: in the Zeitwände collection German and international designers including Ron Arad, Ginbande, Ettore Sottsass and Borek Sipek were let loose to put their postmodern spin on the once mundane world of wall coverings – an early case of the designer product. Even though this collection sooner found its way into museums than into the home, market leader Rasch, whose turnover (2005: 115 million euros) is rising more rapidly abroad than in Germany, had effectively established itself as an innovative brand. The product launch was accompanied by a highly acclaimed advertising campaign in which more or less well-known designers posed in front of plain white walls. The Pop-inspired Colorflage collection by Markus Benesch has of late set another avant-garde accent. Designed for a younger target group, the Colors of Berlin series by Berlin graffiti artist Oliver Kray can of course be pasted up by adults as well.