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

"Paul Betts first came to my attention through his pioneering article on the post-1945 Bauhaus myth as a joint German-American venture. This book is a landmark study of cultural continuities and ruptures, institutional realignments, and individual careers that introduces a breath of fresh air into a field of research long staled by received ideas. It demonstrates the rewards of approaching the years from 1933 to 1945 as a revealing window onto the subsequent history of West Germany."and#151;Wolfgang Schivelbusch

"The Authority of Everyday Objects is a small gem of the new cultural history. This is a work of striking originality and insight that fits the development of industrial design in postwar Germany into the country's broader social, cultural and political history, constructing an analytical narrative that carries from the Third Reich into the Cold War. It illuminates not merely cultural transformation but the wider social history of twentieth-century Germany."and#151;Stanley G. Payne, author of A History of Fascism, 1914-1945

"The Authority of Everyday Objects is a refreshing, innovative, and convincing approach to post-World War II Western consumer society. Designand#151;as a weapon in Cold War competition and as a vehicle for German redemption by revitalizing Bauhaus traditionsand#151;is thoroughly researched and wonderfully presented in Paul Betts' book. This well-illustrated work convinces the reader that design was a part of gluecklich Leben ("lucky life") and schoen wohnen ("beautiful living"), and a factor in the politicization of material culture."and#151;Ivan T. Berend, author of Decades of Crisis: Central and Eastern Europe before World War II and History Derailed: Central and Eastern Europe in the Long Nineteenth Century

From the Werkbund to the Bauhaus to Braun, from furniture to automobiles to consumer appliances, twentieth-century industrial design is closely associated with Germany. In this pathbreaking study, Paul Betts brings to light the crucial role that design played in building a progressive West German industrial culture atop the charred remains of the past. The Authority of Everyday Objects details how the postwar period gave rise to a new design culture comprising a sprawling network of diverse interest groupsand#151;including the state and industry, architects and designers, consumer groups and museums, as well as publicists and women's organizationsand#151;who all identified industrial design as a vital means of economic recovery, social reform, and even moral regeneration. These cultural battles took on heightened importance precisely because the stakes were nothing less than the very shape and significance of West German domestic modernity. Betts tells the rich and far-reaching story of how and why commodity aesthetics became a focal point for fashioning a certain West German cultural identity. This book is situated at the very crossroads of German industry and aesthetics, Cold War politics and international modernism, institutional life and visual culture.

Paul Betts is Lecturer in Modern German History at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England. He is the coeditor of Pain and Prosperity: Reconsidering Twentieth-Century German History (2003).

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction. Design, the Cold War, and West German Culture

1. Re-Enchanting the Commodity: Nazi Modernism Reconsidered

2. The Conscience of the Nation: The New German Werkbund

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

4. Design and Its Discontents: The Ulm Institute of Design

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

6. Coming in from the Cold: Design and Domesticity

Conclusion. Memory and Materialism: The Return of History as Design

Notes

Bibliography

Index