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

3. The Nierentisch Nemesis: The Promise and Peril of Organic Design

CHAPTER THREE The Nierentisch Nemesis The Promise and Peril of Organic Design However important the revival of “good form” design was for the postwar generation, it was hardly West Germany’s only design culture in the 1950s. The decade also witnessed the explosion of a new “organic design ” in West German domestic furnishings. This design wave generally went by the term “Nierentisch culture,” after its main icon, a small threelegged side table shaped rather like a kidney (Niere) (figure 22). Stylistically it was a firm rejection of the austere boxiness of neofunctionalism in favor of more playful lines, asymmetrical shapes, and bold colors. It represented a vital break from an unwanted past by creating a new visual vocabulary of restored optimism and material prosperity. Nierentisch design very much captured the decade, as evidenced by its strong presence in ’50s everyday life and in the memories of West Germans a generation later. Significantly, it also developed a certain concept of both design and designer in stark opposition to its “good form” counterpart. Yet it was by no means universally welcomed as the new aesthetic of renewal and progress. On the contrary, the popularity of Nierentisch design soon gave rise to a counter-crusade by high design publicists and West German intellectuals, who roundly condemned it as crass department store kitsch and irresponsible design. Thus this ’50s design fad offers an alternative account of West German modernism, particularly in its provoking such serious discussion about the very form of a progressive post-Nazi commodity culture. 109 The “Nierentisch Age” We should first clarify what was conventionally understood as “Nierentisch style.” To begin with, although its design forms were inspired by the world of nature, it was by no means a replay of the Third Reich’s völkish naturalism. Gone were the agrarian motifs, rough-hewn wood furniture, and homespun craft wares glorified during the Nazi era. Nor did Nierentisch design turn its back on the industrial world. In fact, it openly celebrated new modern and synthetic materials of all sorts, such as chrome, foam rubber, and above all plastics.1 Yet it was an imitation of nature all the same: its recurrent organic forms were modeled after the smooth, sinuous shapes found in microscopic cellular life. Edges were rounded, lines were bowed, volumes were dilated and surfaces polished as part of this more general Atomic Age fascination with the subvisible world of microbiology. Bright, even brash colors were usually added to lend the object a vibrant and festive air. Special emphasis was placed upon the object’s mobility and free form; its graceful lines and asymmetrical angles were expressly designed to leave behind the heavy representational decoration of yesteryear. Likewise, organic design sharply departed from 110 Chapter Three Figure 22. Nierentisch. Wood with black and white resopal surfacing. Producer: Wörrlein-Werkstätten, Ansbach. There were countless design variations of this basic “couch table” design produced in the ’50s and early ’60s. Source: Ruth Geyer-Raack and Sibylle Geyer, Möbel und Raum (Berlin, 1955), 23. Courtesy of Ullstein-Verlag, Berlin. functional utility in favor of splashy presence and whimsical form. The adjectives “dynamic,” “rhythmic,” “diagonal,” “joyous,” and “loosened up” (locker) were repeatedly used to describe the wonders of this new chic modernity as the very embodiment of the postwar desire for lightness of being. While one could detect echoes in postwar architecture and automobile design, organic design really made its mark in West German home furnishings. Lamps, furniture, tables, vases, ashtrays, and sundry other domestic accoutrements were completely made over in the ’50s according to this new biomorphic design spirit. Favorite items included the spindle-legged “bag lamp,” foam-padded “cocktail chairs,” bulbous portable radios, amoeba-shaped ashtrays, and curvy plastic loveseats, as well as abstract designs on tapestries, wallpaper, and shower curtains. How popular this style really was is virtually impossible to gauge with any real precision. Whereas one 1954 opinion poll revealed that as few as 7 percent of those asked could actually identify so-called Nierentisch forms, others have claimed that “almost every family possessed its modern Nierentisch.”2 Leafing through the design journals, lifestyle magazines , and home decoration literature from the era, however, makes plain just how far-reaching its influence was. And even if its popular appeal had largely died out by the early 1960s, it enjoyed remarkable staying power in the hearts and minds of West Germans decades...