In 1904 Franz Steiff, nephew of the toymaker Margarete Steiff, designed the Knopf im Ohr, the button in the ear. It was meant to set the company’s high-quality toys apart from cheap competitors. The mark was registered with the patent office in 1905. In 2014 the General Court of the European Union refused to protect the button with its tag as an EU trademark. The court found that it lacked distinctiveness.
design
From the Sofa Cushion to the City
In 1907 the Deutscher Werkbund was founded in Munich at the instigation of Hermann Muthesius. Peter Behrens and Richard Riemerschmid were among its founders. Its motto was Vom Sofakissen zum Städtebau, from the sofa cushion to city building. The Werkbund wanted good design for everyday products. A 2014 exhibition at the Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge in Berlin described the aim. Good design would make Made in Germany a seal of quality and raise the export power of the German Empire.
The Good Form
The German cabinetmakers’ trade holds a federal design competition for young journeymen called Die Gute Form, the good form. Each entry is a Gesellenstück, the piece a cabinetmaker builds for the journeyman’s exam. In 2009, for example, every piece in the federal final had already won a prize at state level. The jury looked for ein zeitgemäßer Entwurf, die eigenständige Idee, gutes Design, a contemporary design, an original idea, good design. The 2021 winner, Beatrice Borggreve from North Rhine-Westphalia, built a side table of maple. The jury praised it as a moderne Interpretation eines klassischen Gesellenstücks, a modern interpretation of a classic journeyman’s piece.
One Square Meter, Halved
German office paper follows a standard set in 1922. Walter Porstmann proposed it, and the standards committee founded in 1917 adopted it. Size A0 is exactly one square meter. The sides stand in the ratio of 1 to the square root of 2. Every smaller size comes from halving the one before, so a sheet of A4 is one sixteenth of a square meter. In everyday German, DIN A4 simply means an ordinary sheet of paper. The German standard later became the basis of the international standard ISO 216.
Sixty Years of the 911
The first Porsche 911 was presented on 12 September 1963 at the motor show in Frankfurt. It still has its engine at the rear, a six-cylinder boxer. Its generations carry their own names: original model, G model, 964, 993, 996, 997, 991 and 992. German Wikipedia sums up its history in one sentence: the 911 was kontinuierlich weiterentwickelt, continuously developed. The 996, from model year 1998, was the first 911 with a water-cooled engine. It also shared many parts, such as headlights and fenders, with the Boxster. This brought the new 996 a lot of criticism, above all because it could be mistaken for a Boxster. People called its headlights Spiegeleier, fried eggs. They were replaced in 2002.
How a Business Letter Is Laid Out
Every German who learns to write a business letter meets DIN 5008. The standard sets rules for writing and layout. It deliberately does not regulate content or spelling. It goes back to rules for business mail and typing that an office association published around 1930. In April 1949 the German standards committee took these rules over as DIN 5008. Until 1996 the standard dealt only with the typewriter. From 1996 it also covered word processing on a computer. The 2020 edition describes electronic correspondence in more detail. It no longer mentions the typewriter at all.
Munich 1972, Designed Throughout
In 1966, the designer Otl Aicher was asked to lead the design of the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. His guidelines covered everything von der Kleidung für Mitarbeitende über Möbel bis hin zu den Eintrittskarten, from the clothing of the staff to the furniture to the tickets. Red, gold and black were not allowed. His pictograms for the sports are still used around the world. The dachshund Waldi was the first Olympic mascot of all.
The Leitz Binder
Louis Leitz, a mechanic in Stuttgart, developed the mechanism of the lever-arch binder in the 1890s. The sources differ on the year. The Deutsche Biographie gives 1893, and the Württemberg State Museum gives 1896. In 1911 the binder got the finger hole in its spine. The brand name became the general German word for a lever-arch file, the Leitz-Ordner. The Deutsche Biographie says that Leitz revolutionized the management of written records.
Back to the Craft
In April 1919, Walter Gropius published the program of the new Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar as a leaflet. It called artists back to the craft. Architekten, Bildhauer, Maler, wir alle müssen zum Handwerk zurück! Architects, sculptors, painters, we must all return to the craft! Der Künstler ist eine Steigerung des Handwerkers. The artist is a heightened form of the craftsman. The basis of craftsmanship, Gropius wrote, was essential for every artist. The school organized its students as in a guild, in apprentices, journeymen and junior masters.
The Frankfurt Kitchen
In 1926, the Viennese architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky designed a kitchen for the Neues Frankfurt housing program of the city architect Ernst May. She based the design on the optimization of work processes. Every movement in the kitchen was timed with a stopwatch. The first kitchens were delivered in the autumn of 1926. About 10,000 of the 15,000 new apartments in Frankfurt received one. The smallest type measured 1.9 by 3.4 meters.