Design History Society

HfG Ulm: A Personal View of an Experiment in Democracy and Design Education

Author(s): Heiner Jacob
Source: Journal of Design History, Vol. 1, No. 3/4 (1988), pp. 221234 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Design
History Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1315712
Accessed: 26/11/2008 06:04

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=oup.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the
scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that
promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Oxford University Press and Design History Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to Journal of Design History.

http://www.jstor.org

Heiner Jacob

HfG Ulm : A Personal View of an Experiment

in Democracy and Design Education
Preface
In 1811, in the city of Ulm, August Berblinger, a
tailor, set out to prove that man could fly. He built
a contraption that was to allow him to jump off the
city walls and glide across the River Danube. He
crashed, nearly drowning in the Danube, and
achieved immortality as a figure of public ridicule.
Recent research has proved him to be an ingenious
pioneer of aviation, who just happened to carry out
his experiments under adverse circumstances.
This is the motto of my paper: an ingenious
experiment under adverse circumstances or, can we
learn from history ?
Background

First, a few names, facts and figures. The three

cornerstone dates are: 1943, 1955, and 1968.
In 1943 Hans and Sophie Scholl, two young
students from the south German town of Ulm were
arrested while distributing leaflets at Munich
Univer-

Anficht der Flceche.

r August Berblinger's glider, c. r 81 1

sity urging active resistance to fascism. They were

executed for high treason. After the end of the war
their younger sister, Inge Scholl, determined to
commemorate Hans and Sophie's sacrifice,
dedicated her life to the re-education of young
Germans to 'a spiritual regeneration of a destroyed
and confused post-war Germany'.
A project for an adult education centre in the city
of Ulm took shape, a sort of people's university
which was to become a model for similar
institutions all over Germany. This adult
education centre soon spawned another, more
ambitious project, a political school, at university
level. Its aim was 'to educate a political elite'.
These plans were supported by the military
government of the Allied Forces, especially
American High Commissioner McCloy, who
helped fund this school as well as another important
project, the Frankfurt School of Social Research.
As the Ulm concept needed a focus, everyone
agreed on what is now called 'Environmental
Design'.
A foundation was set up in the name of Hans
and Sophie Scholl, the Geschwister Scholl
Foundation, to help fund a purpose-made campus,
an idea which was radically new for post-war
Germany. The foun der members were Inge Scholl,
one of Sophie Scholl's friends-a young sculptor by
the name of Otl Aicher, the writer Hans Werner
Richter, who was the initiator of a union of
young German authors-the Gruppe 47-and the
Swiss architect Max Bill, a Bauhaus graduate.
The School's activities started under the typical
conditions of the post-war era of austerity, in dilapi
dated buildings, on a shoe-string budget and with a
great deal of dedication on the part of all those
involved. Bill designed the new buildings which
were officially dedicated inl955, with Bill as the
first Rector. 1
Bill's educational goal was that of a Bauhaus-like
community of the arts, but it did not gain majority
support-there was no place for the Fine Arts at

journal of Design History Vol. I Nos. 3-4

1988 The Design History

Hochschule fiir Gestaltung, Ulm. Designed by Max Bill

(built 1953-5). Front entrance, from West

Ulm. The School had four departments :

Industrial Design (the largest department), Visual
Communi cation, Industrialized Building, and
Information (the latter was eventually transformed
into the Depart ment of Film-making).
In any given year the School had approximately
150 students. There was a body of between ten
and fifteen full-time tutors and about forty guest
lecturers. Staff/student ratios never exceeded 1 :
16 in the studios and workshops. In its 12-year
history the
School had a total of 640 students of whom
only 21s graduated with a diploma. Tuition cost,
in the
mid-196os, approximately DM 650 per year. On
average it cost about 8,500 DM a year to educate
a student at the Ulm School.
Funding
The School was a private institution. The bulk of
the required funds came from the State
Government of Baden-Wiirttemberg as, in West
Germany, education is not a federal matter but
rather a responsibility of the eleven confederate
states.
Funding was a perennial problem. Aside from
Inge Scholl's tremendous efforts to collect the
funds for the School's launch in 1955, it is
impressive to see how, in subsequent years, she
rallied for the cause she had dedicated her life to
and how, year after year, she helped the School
to survive with funds cajoled from various
sources. The job verged on the impossible.
Inge Scholl, always an outspoken socialist and a
222

Society 0952-4649 /88 $J.OO

221

driving force in West Germany's Peace Movement,

was a thorn in the flesh of West Germany's
conserva
tives. In 19s2, a year before the School was
originally
planned to open, an anonymous caller denounced
her and her family as commuQ.ist traitors. This led
to a withdrawal of a sizeable grant from the
German steel industry. After marrying the
sculptor and graphic artist Otl Aicher she became
Inge Aicher Scholl. As her name now began with
an A, she found herself in the unfortunate
predicament of always being on top of the list of
signatories whenever she signed
a CND
manifesto. This was far from reassuring to the
members of the State Assembly of BadenWiirttemberg, from which the bulk of the
subsidies came (although long-term commitments
were never made). The first crisis came within a
year of the School's official opening, when the
State Assembly threatened to withdraw funds.
In 1962 the State Government ofBadenWiirttem berg, concerned about the codetermination model of the School made the
continuation of funding dependent on a number of
stipulations, most import antly: the abolition of
the student vote in the Academic Senate, and the
abolition of the joint directorship, the triumvirate
(see Appendix 1), and the appointment of a
single, long-term director. In 1963 the State
commissioned a White Paper from three eminent
professors, assessing the possibility of absorbing
the School into a State University. The experts,
however, recommended that the School should
remain independent, as State supervision would
seriously curb the experimental nature of this
institution.
In trying to sustain the Ulm experiment, all
involved made sacrifices. The full-time lecturers
re ceived salaries which were minimal by any
stan dards. So they depended on additional revenue
from free-lance practice. Although, on the positive
side, this kept the lecturers professionally aloof
and in touch with industrial demands, it
introduced an element of in-built conflict between
academic com mitment versus personal gain which
was not always compatible with the School's aims.
In order to become less dependent on
subsidies, each of the School's departments soon
set out to create revenue through so-called
development groups. These were R & D groups, led
by one or two lecturers and employing a handful
of students with assistant status, working on
commissioned projects.
Heiner Jacob

3 Students in an Industrialized Building seminar

Although this proved to be educationally

beneficial, the groups' revenues were largely
absorbed by inflation.
A big breakthrough was expected around 96s,
when the Institute of Industrialized Building, one
of the development groups, was on the verge of
striking a deal with the building industry. But
ultimately the Institute's designs for modular
housing units did not go into mass production. I
still remember the gloom when the news broke
that not a single manufacturer in Germany would
take the risk of investing in this project. That
year's revenue fell short of expectations and this
put the School even deeper into the red. (See
Appendix 2.)
In 1967 the withdrawal of funds from the 4
Federal Ministry of the Interior passed the buck to
the State Government which was already the
major contributor of subsidies but which, a year
later, rather than adjusting the subsidies to the
rate of inflation, cut them significantly. The
crucial debate in the State Assembly was as short
as it was unwholesome: when a member of the
Assembly, asked whether the School had made any
significant contribution to German society and was
told that he was probably using an electric
shaver the School had developed, he replied 'I
expect industry to develop everyday products, we
do not need a school for that.' Another member of
the Assembly, enquir ing why the School had
such a high proportion of foreign students,
concluded that their respective governments
should pay for their education, not the State
Government.
Ultimately it was the problem of an institution
HfG Ulm: A Personal View

which had never fitted smoothly into established

categories, with subjects so ill-defined and novel
at the time as Industrial Design and Visual
Communi cation. A school with what must have
appeared as vague and speculative perspectives,
and with profiles of professions which simply did
not then yet exist and, most importantly, an
institution preoccupied with continuing academic
arguments which, to the outsider, could only signal
one thing: a state of confusion or, worse, a lack
of competence. The frequent change of
directorship, and especially the introduction of the
triumvirate model, was to irritate government and
industry alike-it came across as chaotic
management.

Crisis year (1968). Students' Union discussing four alternative

options for the School's survival. Session moderated by
students: Michael Klar (left) and Oirnel Mai (right)

Funding was the overt reason why the School

went into financial and academic crisis in 1967.
In 1968 the massive impact of outside pressure
finally destroyed even the solidarity between the
Scholl Foundation, and the School's staff and
students, each group distancing itself from the
others. All staff were given notice. An attempt to
integrate what was left of the student body into an
institute of Stuttgart University failed.
The dates of the School's all-too-short history
coincide with key dates in the history of the
Federal Republic of Germany. 1955 brought to a
close a decade of de-nazification, re-building and
re-edu cation. It was the year of West Germany's
re armament-adverse conditions for a school that
had
223

5 Aerial view of the HfG . Foreground: classrooms on the outer

edges, workshops in the central block .Behind the School
buildings, on the right, studio bungalows for staff. Background:
view across the Danube valley, to the South

set out to 'foster constructive political behaviour'.

1968, the year of the School's closure was, of
course, the year in which the world-wide student
rebellion climaxed, and the start of an alternative
culture.
The Academic Development of the School
Rather than attempt to give a history of the
School's academic development over the entire
period of its existence, I would refer readers to Otl
Aicher's fascinating account (Appendix 3). This
clearly re flects the continual struggle for
definition, direction, and programme content in
the curriculum. Other accounts of the School's
development, by Herbert Lindinger and Abram
Moles, are to be found in the recent publications
edited by Lindinger and by Krampen and Kiichele.
(See Robin Kinross's review article in this issue for
details.)

donated by the city of Ulm, quite a distance from

the town, both physically and mentally.
If you peeked through the large windows of the
halls you saw a lifestyle that was out of this world
: spartan furniture, bare concrete, white walls
without wallpaper, no ornament- lacking every
comfort of the average German living-room. The
place was often referred to as the 'Design
Monastery', which it was, in a way-secluded and
ascetic. Max Bill's architecture provided the
framework for a culture which you, the student,
were supposed to assimilate to-stripped bare of
everything which was not essen tial, it allowed you
to concentrate .
The optimal use of space and light, the absence
of any colour other than that of natural
materials, the honesty with which service
installations were exposed to full view, the
excellence of the craftsman ship, these were all
aspects of your everyday habitat that subliminally
filtered into your system. The environment
began to determine your behaviour. In any case,
you were inhabiting a working manifes tation of
functionalism. Owing to Inge Aicher Scholl's
unbelievable stamina the exorbitant sum of 1
million OM was raised (which must be roughly 3
million pounds by today's standards) but this
was barely enough to erect the outer shell of the
buildings. Staff and students in the early years
spent a great deal of time contributing both to the
construction work and the manufacturing
offurniture. Ifnecessity is the mother of invention,
the Ulm pioneers accepted this challenge. Tables
and chairs were needed- lots

The School Community

The first thing which struck every visitor and
every new Student was the School's location. A 45minute walk from the city centre or,
alternatively, a 20- minute walk from the final bus
stop, you were expecting it 'on top of the hill,
can't miss it, near the radio tower'. Long after you
had passed the last residential buildings and begun
to wonder if you had missed it there it was-on the
top of the Kuhberg, surrounded by grazing land
and forests, on a site
6
224

View from a workshop into an inner court. Workshops were lit

by natural light from two directions

Heiner Jacob

7 Passageway between the educational and social facilities:

a study of the interface between man-made and natural
environ ments

of them. The lecturers' first choice was the

Biermann folding chair2 but the School could not
afford it. So Max Bill and Hans Gugelot designed
a thrifty little device which was to become Vim's
best-known cult

object, under the name of 'The Bill Stool'1 It was

manufactured in the School's workshop at very
little cost. It was a very sturdy wooden
construction providing two different seating
heights as a stool, and could also be used either
as a tray for carrying objects or as a lectern.
Gugelot also designed a dormitory bed frame with
a springy plywood base for foam rubber
mattresses- another piece of inventive technology
geared for in-house production . The dining hall's
cutlery and crockery were, of course, also the
School's own designs as were the lighting
fixtures, the door handles and so forth.
As only one of the three projected dormitories
was completed, only about one-third of all
students lived on campus. The academic staff
enjoyed free accommodation in the studio
bungalows. Visiting lecturers and final year
students lived in spacious studio flats. Others, like
myself, who lived in nearby communities, spent
most of their time on campus anyhow. Working
hours were from 9 until 6, but usually we stayed
late to make use of the facilities, and to have
endless discussions with fellow students. Staff and
students took their meals jointly in the dining
hall. This formed the very hub of the building
complex-it was the one point where everyone
congregated- and the lunch break was
deliberately scheduled to be long enough to
allow the people
8 One of several splitlevel studio flats reserved
for diploma year students
and visiting lecturers

225
HJG Ulm: A Personal View

9 Students in the dining hall. Furniture and crockery designed

in-house. The Bill stool here also in use as a tray (right)

from different departments, students and staff alike,

to communicate . The dining hall and the adjoining
cafeteria were the two places where most of the
philosophical arguments were carried on and many
a good project originated there. There were no
social barriers between students and lecturers,
which came as a complete culture shock to me, just
having been discharged from national service.
Itwas a close-knit community, very selfcontained. We spent most of our time together in
the School. I cannot remember ever going on any
pub crawls with my mates in downtown Ulm.
Indeed, we rarely went to town. We didn't mix a
lot with the townspeople and we didn't feel we
fitted in. Ulm is a very down to-earth place, with a
medieval street pattern and a conservative
population ; we preferred to stay on the Kuhberg
with our heads in the clouds in our esoteric, wellorganized environment.
Despite a steep tuition fee (otherwise education in
Germany is free) students came from all walks of
life. In order to qualify you needed to be a graduate
of a design-related course elsewhere; this made the
Ulm School in fact West Germany's first Graduate
School. Alternatively, you had to have completed
vocational training in a relevant field. As
eligibility for other German colleges invariably
depends on inflexible academic qualifications, Ulm
was unique in offering people lacking these a real
chance. Most students actually had had some work
experience before enrol ling, and the average
student age was 2 7. Of the I so students only
few ( I s per cent) were women. The proportion of
students from abroad varied from around 30 per
cent in the early years to around so per cent in the
later years. My own contemporaries
226

IO

Kohei Sugiura (Japan), a visiting lecturer, in the dining hall

came from Germany, Peru, Switzerland, Japan, and

Vietnam. My tutors were German, Austrian, Swiss,
American, French, Argentinian, and Japanese . The
schedule was tight: 36 hours per week of required
attendance. But we usually put in a lot more,
anyway.
I understand that the students in the early phase
of the school went through some sort of unofficial
initiation which manifested itself in everyone crop
ping someone else's hair. Some people expressed
their change of identity by changing their first
names: Otto became Otl, Guido called himself Gui
and Adolf was shortened to Dolf. Everyone adapted
the radical lower-case-only style of writing, which
the Bauhaus had propagated previously . All the
students wore clothes of a simple, straight cut,
preferably in black or grey-colour was thought
frivolous. If you had been a painter previously, you
stopped painting- it was considered unbecoming for
a functionalist. Music was acceptable only if it
had the mathematical clarity of J. S. Bach or the
syncopated lucidity of the Modern Jazz Quartet. All
this changed in the later years, when students
displayed more catholic tastes. We started listening
to Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys, the Kinks; we loved
comic strips and spent hours on pinball machines.
Finally, the political counter-currents of 1968
reached the School.
The HfG : an Evaluation
Ulm as a model for design education
Chiefly through the chemistry of its full-time
lecturers the School had an in-built ability
constantly to redefine itself and its goals. This
mechanism was
Heiner Jacob

institutionalized in the form of the so-called Edu

cational Conference (tutors, technicians, student
representatives) who critically reviewed and re
shaped the curriculum every year. On the negative
side, the ensuing intensive academic arguments were
often carried on in public, where they were picked
up by the media, causing cumulative damage to the
School.
The staff/student ratio was optimal. Studio and
workshop classes never exceeded fifteen and
seminars were held for a maximum audience of
fifty. In the studio, staff were available almost fulltime. The full time staff provided the continuity
whilst the visiting lecturers added variety and
counterpoint. There were approximately four
visiting lecturers to each full time member of staff.
How ideal conditions for study really were dawned
on me many years later, when I told a friend that I
considered that only about three quarters of my
course had been useful. She laughed, saying more
than three-quarters of hers had been an utter
waste of time. She had spent parts of her course in
lecture theatres seating 800 plus students. Whereas
I had been privileged to have a tutor to talk to for
a whole week, she had not had a personal word
from most of her tutors for a whole term. In fact,
her course was so unpersonal, non-attendance was
more productive than sitting through tedious
monster-seminars. Most importantly, through our
close working relationship with tutors at the School
we acquired a methodology, a structured approach
to work- something which was totally non-existent
in many other colleges. But the curricular structure
of the School had an influence on many design
schools in Germany and elsewhere.

Ulm as instrumental in creating professional profiles

In the early 1950s design and the designer's role
were vague and speculative concepts. So the Ulm
students took quite a risk when they prepared
themselves for a profession which, at that time,
quite simply did not exist, and for which German
industry had no place. By the early 96os a handful
of Ulm graduates had started working in and for
industry, asserting themselves and creating more
demand. Around 1970, the emergence of degree
courses in design at various German colleges is an
indication of the fact that, finally, a professional
profile had begun to evolve. This, in no small part,
was one of the Ulm School's major achievements.
HfG Ulm: A Personal View

remained unchanged, failing to reflect these changes

and aspirations in society. 'Ulmers' kept promoting

Ulm as a pioneer
In many respects, the Ulm School of Design was
ahead of its time. For instance: the designing of
systems led to programmed design which, in turn,
laid the foundations of computer-aided design. But
this happened long before the Ulm students had
access to computers which, at that time were station
ary, bulky, and impractical to operate, let alone
purchase. No one could then have foreseen the
advent of the PC, nor imagined that many students
would be able to afford them.
Another area which Ulm pioneered was the use
of sandwich materials (i.e. the use of synthetics
in connection with traditional materials). And yet
another area in which designs were made before
industry was ready for them, was that of industrial
ized (i.e. pre-fabricated) building.
In visual communication the concept of corporate
identity was pioneered as a serious subject for study.
Aicher's commission for the corporate identity of
West Germany's national airline, Lufthansa, pro
vided an influential example for others to follow.
Ulm's impact on education
The Ulm School pioneered the idea of functionalism
in post-war Germany, and in this, to some extent,
it succeeded. But what matters most, historically
speaking, is not so much the products those associ
ated with the School helped create and the limited
impact these had in the marketplace but rather the
fact that Ulm designers today hold key positions in
industry and act as role models in education.
The limitations of Ulm's concept of functionalism
The Ulm concept of functionalism originated in the
late 94os, at a time of need, in the austerity of a
Germany which had to be rebuilt both physically
and philosophically. Doing more with less was the
keynote of the entire era. By the time the School got
under way, the economic. situation had already
begun to change. The mid-195os brought an age of
prosperity. Industry boomed, and all of a sudden the
market was over-supplied and competitive. With
the so-called era of the 'Economic Miracle' came
conspicuous consumption. The older generation,
after years of deprivation, wanted to enjoy the fruits
of their work at last; what they wanted was comfort,
pleasure, and a little luxury on the side. Yet, in the
face of this, Ulm's philosophy of functionalism
227

austere objects and, in their self-contained universe,

there appeared to be no place for differentiated individ

ual or social needs. This inflexibility is my first

point of criticism.
The second is the deterioration of the concept of
functionalism to the singular criterion of 'fitness for
mass production'. Certain factors such as tooling
requirements, manufacturing technologies, or the
viability of certain processes gained priority over
other criteria such as end-use and end-user
variables. In the later years of the School's existence
an object was considered well designed if it was
economical to produce. (This retrogression was
perhaps most evident in one half of the
Industrialized Building Department, whilst the
other half of the same depart ment pursued a rather
anti-capitalist view of urban planning.)

Ulm's other blind spots

When Ulm is compared with the Bauhaus it is
important to realize that the Ulm School could not
simply continue where the Bauhaus had left off. So
many conditions in the socio-cultural context had
changed. Ulm acknowledged some of these but
chose to ignore others. One of the things that had
fundamentally changed industry was the widespread
use of plastics technology in mass production. Ulm
incorporated this technology to some degree but
neither was the workshop equipment adequate nor
did the academic staff realize the full implications of
this new technology. If they had, chemical engineer
ing would have had to be incorporated in the
curriculum.
Another factor that had materially altered society
was television. Ulm did not really give television
any serious thought; staff chose to ignore it whilst at
the same time they sent students to seminars on
the socio-cultural dynamics of twentieth-century
society. But that attitude was just part of a larger
picture: Ulm ideologists also turned a blind eye to
the area of Popular Culture. This was simply
anathema to Ulm and, in this regard, their
interpretation of functionalism as the culture of a
common denomi nator which ideally suppressed
all idiosyncracies, personal or social, revealed itself
to be reductionist and puritan. It should be food
for thought that the Ulm School folded at precisely
the moment when the
228

Woodstock generation led to a liberalization of life

styles. The 'Ulmers' stubbornly ignored all this.
Unwillingness to extend their idea of functionalism
to embrace broader issues had led to stagnation.
'Management' was another subject conspicuously
absent from the Ulm curriculum; together with
other areas of business and commerc,such as
'Marketing', it was dismissed by staff and students
alike as 'techniques of manipulation'.

The integration of theory and practice

The 50/ 50 balance of theory and practice looks
impressive on paper, but there was a snag to itand you won't find any of this in the books.
Scheduling problems dictated that studio-based
design activities take place in week one and
seminars, lectures and workshop experiments in
week two and so forth. In other words, if it was
'Theory' last week, you had 'Practice' this week.
Almost everyone who was subjected to this
pattern over a period of time came to accept that
the two were separate. This was, of course, the
opposite of what the School had set out to
achieve: an integration of theory and practice.
This explains why in many of the School's
projects there is such an obvious discrepancy
between elabor ate briefs and impressive research
and document ation on the one hand, and
underwhelming design solutions on the other.
I have drawn my own conclusions from this:
ideally, design education needs to put theorists and
practitioners together, in a team-teaching situation.
And when I teach, in my assignments, theory comes
in not at the start of a project, but mid-way, when
students can accept the validity of an intellectual
structure, when it can be put to use and prove itself
to be useful.
The lack of proper public relations
The School produced an impressive body of
writing, much of it appearing in the house
magazine,
ulm, and
reprinted elsewhere.
Alternative views were published in output, the
student Union magazine. This, to the historian, is
valuable material and it must appear that the
School's activities were well publicized. This isn't
quite correct. The problem was that the School was
addressing a solely academic community.
Influential as ulm magazine may have been among
designers, it did not cause any ripples in the
business community. There was virtually no
Heiner Jacob

development groups and refused to work within

them. But industrial contacts were vital to the
School, not only in terms of revenue but also to
provide opportunities to develop and verify new
concepts under market conditions. For this purpose
the School ought to have recruited a full-time indus
trial liaison officer in order to market the School's
products and expertise, preferably a person with a
background in industrial management.
The Legacy

Briefing for a competition project (contrived publicity

shot)
11

PR in the economic press. Public Relations at Ulm

simply weren't public. Gui Bonsiepe, the editor of
ulm, was a full-time tutor and was thus unable to
devote more than a fraction of his time to publicity.
Yet for an institution which so desperately needed
to prove itself in order to secure funding, public
relations should have been the responsibility of a
full-time PR officer or marketing expert with
contacts in industry and the press.
Relationships with industry

The School had few valuable contacts with industry.

Small companies, such as Braun, were congenial
partners but did not create enough volume of work
to help the School materially. Large ones, such as
Lufthansa or BASF, commissioned projects of a
rather limited duration. The sum total of all this
did not provide a sufficient basis for medium-term
funding. Why were there so few industrial contacts
? In retrospect it would appear that the School
had a somewhat schizophrenic attitude towards
industry. On one hand the Ulm design
philosophy centred around the very concept of
industrial mass pro duction. On the other hand
many students and staff viewed industry not as an
ally, but rather as a threat: there seemed to be
irreconcilable differences between the School's
academic objectives of 'excel lence' and
'commitment to social needs' and indus try's
motivation to maximize profits or to get a good
return on investment.
In this uneasy relationship a certain section of the
student body opposed the work of the School's
HJG Ulm: A Personal View

eyes in Germany today ? My young designer col

leagues at Sedley Place Design, with an average age
of 25, went to the great Ulm retrospective at the

Now, 20 years after the School's demise, the heirs

have started carving up the inheritance. It appears
that at least three factions survive who hardly talk
to each other. One is a small group around the
industrial designer Nick Roericht, still based in
Ulm. They put together a documentary exhibition,
the 'Ulm Synopsis' which relates the School to the
historical and cultural context.5 Another faction is
an old-boy-network type of club, the 'club off ulm'
whose basic concern is to keep track of everyone
(their directory of addresses is certainly an aid to
research) and to build a collection of artefacts. The
third party is the Bauhaus Archiv in Berlin which,
some time ago began soliciting objects for its
collec tion from people formerly associated with
the HfG, on the grounds that, as the HfG was the
successor of the Bauhaus, the Archive is entitled
to preserve the HfG's estate as well.
However, a majority of documents, objects, and
models has meanwhile been donated, by the 'club
off ulm', to the Museum of the City of Ulm, which
will accommodate this special collection for the
time being. A proposal to use the original HfG
facilities as a museum is currently under
consideration.
What happened to the buildings? After temporary
use as an officer training camp for the Bundeswehr,
and as an extension of the local School of Engineer
ing, after years of vacancy and dilapidation, Bill's
fine buildings have, at last, found suitable tenants
again. They house the Ulm University's Medical
Faculty and visitors are happy to report that the
place, again, has become a haven of academic
creativity and committed research. The buildings,
once close.to disintegration due to neglect and lack
of maintenance, are now being restored, after being
declared, believe it or not, a national monument.
How then is Ulm seen through young designers
229

Bauhaus Archive last year. They returned slightly

dejected with the questions : 'Why is Ulm famous ?
Why is it supposed to be good ? They were pioneers,

of what ?' They looked at displays with grid

systems, lattice deformations, perception studies,
modular constructions, colourless objects, and
pedantic graphics- and they didn't like it. They
thought it was boring, rigid, tedious. They called it
over bearing, self-conscious and, mercilessly,
bloodless, funless, indeed, lifeless. What they saw
was, in fact, the antithesis of everything they call
'design' and of that which made them choose this
very profession. (By the way, they are excellent
designers, and exciting to work with.) Among
young German de signers it is better not to
mention you come from Ulm. They make you feel
you're a dinosaur. I exaggerate, but only a little.
This is significant as, over the years, Ulm's
reductionist style and its puritan objects-the
artefacts-have been replaced by something else,
whilst those qualities hidden to the eye-the
methodology behind the objects, the processes that
led there-have been passed on to others and
brought to more sophisticated levels, elsewhere, but
on Ulm's foundations.
Conclusion

Are there lessons for the present in the example of

the Ulm School ? When I look at design schools in
Britain and Germany today, I cannot deny that
design education is wasteful. The Ulm School is a
case in point. In its curriculum, the School wanted
both the best of everything and to be self-sufficient
in every area. This simply is not economical. I
believe that, in the long run, design schools cannot
afford full-time staffing in peripheral subjects,
neither can they all own the latest state-of-the-art
technology. What it all boils down to is the need for
colleges to pool resources, technical resources as
well as staff, on a regional basis. If football teams
can play away games, so can design students and
teachers. The Ulm School should have joined
forces with other schools but, in retrospect, it was
too self-contained and inward-looking to do so.
HEINER JACOB

Sedley Place Design/ Hochschule der Kiinste, Berlin

230

Notes
This is a slightly edited transcript of a talk given at the
symposium 'Product Design in Post-War Germany: The
Nierentisch, the Ulm School and the Avant-garde reaction',
organized by the Art and Politics in Germany Study Group, at
the Goethe Institute, London, in March 1988.
1 See Appendix 1 for a list of Rectors of the school from its
foundation to its closure.
2 For an illustration of Egon Eiermann's SE18 folding chair,
designed in 1952, see Mobel die Geschichte machen:
Moderne Klassiker, Verlag Gruner & Jahr, Hamburg, p. 9.
3 See Fig. 9. For another illustration see de Jong, H. (ed.),
Stoelen/Chairs/Chaises/Stuhlen/Sedi, Delft TH, n.d., p. 02-08.
The 'Bill Stool' was made of three jointed boards, reinforced
by a rod.
4 Besides the 'Bill Stool', objects in use in the School designed
by students and staff included the following : lighting
fixtures (Walter Zeischegg); door handles (Max Bill; Enl.st
Moeck!); dormitory bed (Hans Gugelot); kitchen sinks
(Max Bill and Walter Zeischegg); carousel projectors (Hans
'Nick' Roericht ).
5 See Robin Kinross's review article in this issue for
publication details.

References
K. Frampton, 'Apropos Ulm: Curriculum and Critical Theory',
Oppositions, 3, 1974.
Uppercase, 5 (special issue), 1963; ed. Theo Crosby; authors
include Bonsiepe and Maldonado.
H. Lindinger (ed.), Ulm: die Moral der Gegenstande (catalogue and
first comprehensive documentation of an exhibition shown at
the Bauhaus Archive, Berlin and the Centre Pompidou, Paris)
Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, Berlin, 1987.
'hfg ulm- ein riickblick' (a retrospective), Archithese, 15, 1975;
authors include Claude Schnaidt, Otl Aicher, Herbert Ohl,
Kenneth Frampton.
B. Riibenach, der rechte winkel von ulm (script of a radio
feature; a report on the Hochschule fiir Gestaltung, with a
postscript by Bernd Meurer), Verlag Georg Buchner, Darmstadt,
1987.
ulm, journal of the Ulm School of Design. 21 volumes, in
English and German, published by the HfG between 1958 and
1968. output, journal of the students of the HfG Ulm. 22
volumes, in German only, 1961-4.
HJG-Synopse published by N. H. Roericht, Ulm, 1988.

APPENDIX

Rectors of the Hochschule fiir Gestaltung, Ulm,

1954-68
1954 Bill
1955 Bill
1956 Bill
1957 Bill
1958 Aicher, Gugelot, Maldonado
1959 Aicher, Kesting, Maldonado
1960 Kalow, Rittel, Vordemberge-Gildewart
Heiner Jacob

1961 Kalow, Gugelot

Rittel, Vordemberge-Gildewart
1962 Ohl, Maldonado
Rittel, Vordemberge-Gildewart
1963 Aicher

APPENDIX

1964 Maldonado
1965 Maldonado
1966 Ohl
1967 Ohl
1968 Ohl

Sources of Funding of the HfG, 1957-67

Academic Year

Ministry of
Culture
Baden-W.

1957/58
1958/59

180,000
180,000

1959/60

180,000

1960/61
1961
1962

Ministry of Economy Federal Ministry

Baden-W.
of Interior

City of
Ulm

Own
revenue

Total
budget

312,000

642,000

75,000
90,000

75,000
64,000

405,000

739,000

100,000

170,000

61,000

516,000

1,027,000

180,000

125,000

150,000

62,000

671,000

1,188,000

250,000

130,000

152,000

61,000

1,030,000

500,000

300,000

95,000

437,000
602,000

1963

600,000

269,550

150,000

950,000

1,970,252

1964

600,000

246,000

200,000

636,240

1,682,240

1965

600,000

200,000

200,000

339,654

1,339,654

1966

900,000

200,000

200,000

649,778

1,949,778

1967

900,000

200,000

n.a.

1,497,000

Note: All figures in Deutsch Marks.

APPENDIX

HfG Ulm: A Concise History

Otl Aicher

Phase : The Concept

Considerable sociological rigour reigns, in the vein
of Thorstein Veblen. No more Art, the street being
more important than the museum, the lead article
more vital than the literary column, creativity in the
workshop more essential than ideas on the drawing
board.
I leave sculpture class, and so does Walter Zeisch
egg. We hold that the quality of our society is
determined by the level of its products, its pro
grammes for supply and demand and its communi
cation.
The initial concept evolves in August 1949, with
the programme for the Ulm Volkshochschule, a
municipal People's University. There is a scarcity
of potential lecturers on the pressing problems of
rebuilding Germany.
HJG Ulm: A Personal View

Fritz Winter and Noone-Schmidt, on behalf of

other Bauhaus graduates propose to resurrect the
Bauhaus in conjunction with the People's University.
The programme includes subjects such as soci
ology, psychology, and, new at the time, writing on
a par with graphic design, product design and
architecture.
The programme is presented by Inge Scholl to the
American High Commissioner, John McCloy, who
promises to raise American funds provided matching
funds can be secured in Germany.
The educational concept plans to combine design
ing with teaching and, more importantly, to extend
this into research and development (i.e. a continuity
from initial proposals to prototypes). This marks
a new stage in the ongoing discussion on reform of
the educational system in Germany, especially with
regard to the unresolved relationship between univ
ersities, art schools, and technical colleges.
Zeischegg develops a programme for a Research
Institute of Product Form, Max Bill designs the
School's facilities.
231

12 HfG buildings. Designed by Max Bill (built 1953-5). Rear

entrance, classroom and workshop blocks, from West

Phase 2 : Planning and Launch

Bill's initial concept for a single structure to

incorpor ate all facilities, student dwellings, lecture
halls and workshops under one roof, is rejected.
Bill's educational concept, based on Bauhaus
prin ciples, is being curbed: there will be no
painters' or sculptors' classes, no silversmithing.
Art with a capital A is viewed as an irritation to
Design.
Bill becomes the first Rector. Bill envisages the
Information Department as a public relations instru
ment for the School.
His educational philosophy centres around an
academy concept: master artisan/apprentice re
lationships in small groups, without a structured
syllabus.
Albers and Peterhans accept his invitation as
guest lecturers; they, too, are Bauhaus people. Bill's
view of Design is still a hierarchical one :
engineers and manufacturers are still seen as mere
executors of the designer's plans.
Bill asks Hans Gugelot and Tomas Maldonado to
join the faculty.
Phase 3 : Curriculum
The younger lecturers press for an evaluation of
design basics. Gugelot and Zeischegg develop a
programme for the incorporation of engineering
sciences. Maldona'do contributes a curricular frame
work to include information theory and
methodology as well as a concept for a Foundation
Course.
The educational model of Ulm is taking shape,
based on the technology and science of Design,
with the designer not seen as being a superior, but
rather as a team member in the decision-making
process of industrial production.
232

13

Students In an Industrialiud Building seminar

Remnants of Werkbund ideology- such as

'Aptness of material' and 'Tooling' -give way to
'Production technologies' .
The curriculum consists of so per cent practical
design work and so per cent theoretical disciplines.
Parallel to the studio work and the teaching of
Theory so called 'Development Groups' are
instituted. Their purpose: whenever possible, design
hypotheses should be subjected to verification
through the pro cess of industrial mass production,
thus ensuring a feedback of practical expertise into
teaching. Through their revenue the Development
Groups are expected to contribute significantly to
the School's budget.
19s7: Bill's departure, 2 years after the School's
opening. Bill would not subscribe to the Young
Turks' novel ideas any more. Owing to
irreconcilable differences, he stormed off and
refuses to talk to them ever again.
Phase 4: Technological Design
Maldonado develops his Foundation Course based
on the conviction that the design process is a
sequence of quantifiable, manageable steps.
Gugelot extends his ideas of system design and
designing kit systems. His designs begin to succeed
in industry.
Max Bense changes the course of the Information
Department, becoming less practice-minded,
concen trating on analyses in mathematical
information theory. Recruiting lecturers for the
Information Department is getting to be a
problem; invitations go out to various members of
Gruppe 47.
Under Herbert Ohl the Building Department
deals exclusively with industrialized (i.e. prefabricated) building processes.
Heiner Jacob

Konrad Wachsmann, of the Illinois Institute of

Technology, gives a guest course with an extreme
technology bias.
Conventional architecture, even Le Corbusier's, is
conspicuously absent from the curriculum .
Concen tration on kit systems and modular
structures, on topology and production technologies
.
Herbert Ohl founds the Institute for Industrialized
Building.
Typography is also approached as modular
design. In Visual Communication : syntactic rather
than semantic problems. Emphasis on information
systems
rather than on concrete messages .
Phase 5 : Cybernetic Design and Positivism
Problems of Methodology dominate: factor
analysis, diagrams, matrix. The step by step
design process becomes detached from the end
product and its end use.
Under Horst Rittel the emphasis is on a
mathemat ical approach and a preference for
mathematically definable processes.
Applied process research. Under Perrine,
research into perception is reduced to the purely
physiological aspects.
Even sociology is used as a static description of
processes . . . Design is defined as programming
for computer-controlled manufacturing systems.
(Nor bert Wiener lectures on 'How to predetermine the weather'.)
Information and aesthetics are measured in bits.
There are calls for a value-free, non-ideological
college allowing a variety of different schools of
thought to co-exist, as practised in university
depart
ments of Science.
Phase 6 : Value-determined Design
Opposition is mounting against a technocratic ideo
logy (Zeischegg/Aicher). A call for social
objectives and criteria for the evaluation of
designs, stressing the difference between scientific
and sociological causalities.
The application of computers is not ruled out, but
limited to detail aspects.
Design is viewed as the ethics underlying social
developments.
There
are
discussions
on
commercial ism and market-oriented formalism.
The role of HfG Design is seen as a long-term
influence on the market rather than being oriented
around short-term market demands.
HfG Ulm: A Personal View

14 A student (Claudia Alemann) using 35 mm film editin

facilities

Clashes between 'scientists' and 'craftsmen' .

Rittel and Kesting leave the School.
Phase 7
Under Christian Staub photography extends into
photojournalism and documentary film-making . . .
Rediscovery of content!
Bonsiepe develops analytical models based on
linguistics. Alexander Kluge and Edgar Reitz found
an Institute of Film-making, but make no real effort
to integrate it with the rest of the School. This is
supported by a new administration which becomes
increasingly autocratic, pushing for a one-man
direc torate-to no avail: the School continues to
be run by those who are the School.
Phase 8 : Designing Programmes
Individual assignments are replaced with complex
interdisciplinary projects, with each department
deal ing with specific aspects. One example:
Schnaidt, Wirsing and Lindinger's project on
'Education '. Courses are organized around project
groups. The topics of student discussions cease to
come from within the School, external issues take
over. Calls for a student vote in a parity of thirds,
for academic staff, student body and technicians to
have equal votes.
Simultaneously, public debates in the State As
sembly on the merit and the future of the Ulm
School.
The State authorities make certain stipulations.
With increasing discussions on political (i.e. consti
tutional) issues of the day, design activities dwindle.
The typewriter becomes the predominant designer
233

tool; the programmatic has replaced programmed

design.
In the place of tangible concepts and design that
could be subjected to evaluation, these
programmatic statements contain an increasing
amount of vacuous rhetoric.
Phase 9 : Institute of Environmental Planning
To secure regular funds it is suggested that the
School be turned over to the State. Itis to merge
with the
Stuttgart
University Architecture
Department, surrendering its autonomy. In order to
re-structure the School, the authorities order all
staff contracts to be cancelled.
A programme is drafted for an Institute
ofEnviron mental Planning, with new staff.
The academic output remains mainly verbal, with
little planning or designing being done. It is a relapse
into the malaise of higher education in Germany,
which is always content with Knowledge, and reluc
tant to evaluate or verify this knowledge through the
development of models- the old dilemma between
theory and practice, the misconception of viewing
practice merely as the source of theory.
The Institute folds after a short period due to lack
of a creative approach.

234

r 5 Historic meeting (1968) of the School Community, in the

aula, at which staff and students voted against a merger with

Stuttgart University

With the Ulm School of Design an important

educational model in post-war Germany has ceased
to be.
(Published in Archithese, 15, 1975. Translated here
by Heiner Jacob. Translator's note : I have
translated this almost verbatim, with a few cuts,
trying to retain Aicher's shorthand style.)

Heiner Jacob