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

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

CHAPTER FIVE Design, Liberalism, and the State The German Design Council On April 4, 1951, the Rat für Formgebung, or German Design Council, was established by West Germany’s Bundestag as a new government agency charged with promoting “the best possible form of German products .” The creation of this national design council capped a hard-fought campaign by the German Werkbund to enlist government assistance in popularizing “good form” design. Called upon to protect the “competitive interests of both German industry and handicrafts as well as German consumers,” the council represented Bonn’s first and only attempt to wed the economic and cultural life of West German industrial commodities .1 But unlike the Werkbund or the Ulm Institute of Design, the German Design Council has attracted virtually no scholarly consideration . What marginal attention it has received has been quite negative: more often than not the council has been characterized as a colorless pawn of government and industry.2 This chapter seeks to establish the Design Council’s special importance within the larger history of West German culture. Above all, the council perfectly illustrated the perceived Cold War linkages among liberalism, the state, and modern design. How and to what extent the Design Council helped promote West Germany’s cultural identity as a species of international modernism in design venues and international cultural fairs are central issues in this chapter. The council ’s significance, however, was not limited to converting design into diplomacy . Equally revealing were its internal conflicts over the greater end of industrial design, its copyright reform campaign, and its bid for professionalization . Each case pointed up the inherent desire and difficulty associated with reconciling culture and commerce. Analysis thus reveals the German Design Council as a key instance in the broader crusade to 178 imbue West German modernization with abiding social value and cultural meaning. Design, Government, and National Identity The idea to create a national design council was initially the brainchild of the German Werkbund during the late 1940s. As discussed in chapter 2, the Werkbund organized numerous exhibitions and cultural venues in support of its reform ideals. However, it faced real administrative obstacles. Most formidable was West Germany’s Basic Law, whose codi- fied federalization of culture and education precluded the creation of any national-level Werkbund. In response, the Werkbund turned its attention toward establishing a centralized government-financed design council as the best way of promoting export revenues, cultural reform, and even moral regeneration.3 Since national economic affairs were administered by Bonn, the Werkbund petitioned the Federal Ministry of Economics in 1949 to create a new German Design Council as a sort of indirect national Werkbund.4 The proposal quickly gained wide support, in large part because of Bonn’s desire to remedy West Germany’s disastrous 1949 DecorateYour House industry show in New York. The new republic’s first industrial exhibition in the United States had met with universal derision from visitors and critics alike. Its exhibition of Bavarian arts and crafts, Louis XV– style furniture, and overly decorated porcelain was roundly lampooned by the American press as laughable “parvenu-style” kitsch. After remarking that “it has been a long time since New York has seen such an accumulation of expensive rubbish as displayed in this German exhibition ,” one critic went so far as to challenge West Germany’s cherished self-image as thoroughly cleansed of Nazi culture: It seems as if the entire world has learned from Germany’s Werkbund and Bauhaus, but that only Germany itself does not believe in it. Either Germany has returned to the false pomposity of the Gründerzeit (where perhaps the pompous style of the Third Reich lent a helping hand) or it possesses too much self-conceit in assuming that the whole world has barbaric tastes, thus withholding its better design products from foreign exhibitions.5 Such a critique of West German design styling suggested a host of awkward impressions that West Germans desperately wanted to dispel: first, that West Germany remained culturally backward and/or arrogant; sec179 Design, Liberalism, and the State ond, that it had made no cultural break with Nazism; and third, that it had inexplicably turned its back on its affirmative heritage of international modernism. Eager to counteract this public relations disaster, West German politicians greeted the Werkbund proposal as both timely and appropriate. Several members of the West German parliament, most notably...