The Form of Socialism without Ornament
Consumption, Ideology, and the Fall and Rise of Modernist Design in the German Democratic Republic
Assistant Professor, Department of History, Western Michigan University
Industrial designers who inherited the Bauhaus legacy experienced a dramatic reversal of fortunes in the socialist German Democratic Republic. The height of the Stalinist era in the Soviet Bloc, 1950–1953, meant a near complete shutdown of modernist and functionalist design and architecture. However, modernist designers found a niche later as the East German economy needed to mass-produce goods without sacrificing quality and with a particular modern appeal, in order to keep up with the shifting and competitive context of the Cold War and to satisfy the postwar generation of East German consumers. Eventually, heirs of Bauhäusler Mart Stam, such as Martin Kelm, found their way into positions of considerable power in the economic planning bureaucracy. The strange confluence of modernist designers and post-Stalinist socialism leads to one of the central questions of the article: is modern design – at least partially—inherently well-suited for the socialist command economy?
Key Words: consumer products • East Germany • functionalism • kitsch • ornament • Planned Economy