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

Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004. 384 pp. $50.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-52024004-9. Reviewed by Stephanie Warnke (International Research Center for Cultural Studies, Vienna) Published on H-German (March, 2005) The Authority of Everyday Objects, Or: Style Matters The materiality of culture has returned to history and cultural studies with a vengeance. At recent conferences like The Culture of Things or In the Realm of Things, the material world has regained the center of attention. This material turn carries the danger of reication of history and of creating new self-arming genealogies. Paul Bettss cultural history of West German industrial design is a convincing example of how to write a history of design after the visual turn without falling into this trap. At the crossroads of social history, cultural studies, and popular culture, he oers a deep and detailed case study of West German postwar institutions and media concerned with industrial design (p. 6). debate on postwar family and private life. It might be important to know that the project was initially planned as a comparative study of East and West German industrial design, a task that the author then considered too large, complex, and contradictory to pursue. Nonetheless the cultural conditions of Cold War competition are fundamental for the understanding of West German design history. The rst chapter tells the story of the marriage of functionalist modernism and racism under the Nazi regime in three case studies: the approach of Nazis and Werkbund after 1933, Albert Speers Beauty of Labor Bureau, and the Kunst-Dienst all give revealing examples of the Third Reichs aestheticization of politics (Walter Benjamin). Noticing the lack of any real change in design from 1930 to 1940 (p. 46), Paul Betts stresses the nationalization of design objects through new strategies of object display, overlaying 1920s functionalism with a veneer of Gemtlichkeit u (p. 41). As in the rest of the book, Bettss interpretations and comparisons of product photography are exemplary for the integration of visual sources into cultural history. This chapter is much more than introductory, and perhaps Bettss emphasis on the continuity of design from the 1920s to the 1960s and on the Nazi period could also have been made clear in the title of the book.

The book covers mainly the 1950s, a period which Betts calls perhaps the most thingly of all epochs (p. 4). The postwar experience of progress and afuence, combined with the massive spreading of new materials and consumer goods, went hand in hand with an aestheticization of everyday life and blurred the borders between public and private. Bettss rereading of design and cultural journals, exhibition catalogues, household advice literature, advertising, design school and government records, reveals the imagined connections among commodity styling, cultural progress, and national identity. He focuses on everyday household objects, leaving out urban planning, residential architecture, vehicle design, arts and Chapters 2, 4, and 5 approach West Germanys crafts, and graphic design. design history via the histories of its institutions. The The chapters of the book are organized around Werkbund, Ulms New Bauhaus, and the German the history of institutions like the German Werkbund, Design Council were all places for negotiating the the Ulm Institute of Design, and the German Design possibility of cultural re-education, social reconstrucCouncil, with a large chapter on the role and meaning tion, economic recovery, and international recognition of everyday design wares during the Third Reich. through the production of modern design objects. The popular Nierentisch style of the 1950s and the The Werkbund had only little success with its postpop culture nostalgia of it during the late 1970s and war search for good form and its publicity for funcearly 1980s are treated as well as the broader cultural tionalism as a messenger of truth, beauty, and moral1

H-Net Reviews

ity. But one result of its eort to moralize design was the foundation of the German Design Council in 1951 as a non-prot consulting agency promoting the popularization of West German industrial design. The most famous expression of this new design politics was the German pavilion at the 1958 World Exposition in Brussels. Eorts to professionalize design also led to the foundation of the Ulm Institute of Design in 1955 with support of the American High Command of Germany and the regional government. The wellknown collaboration with the consumer electronics rm of Braun helped to promote the institutes functionalist style in West Germany and abroad. But the establishment of a new science in Ulm based on sociology, semiotics, and political engagement failed simultaneously with the general crisis of functionalism at the end of the 1960s. Chapters 3 and 6 do not t into this organization of the book according to the institutions. Nierentisch-style as the most popular expression of common taste during the 1950s and household advice literature concerned with the new cult of domesticity demonstrate the postwar gap between high design culture and the low rejection of functionalism. The pastel colors and biomorphic forms of Nierentisch furniture and household wares formally expressed the biggest possible distinction from vlkisch or ratioo nalist Nazi aesthetics. Free Nierentisch forms were the sign for starting anew and for the joys of consumerism, while intellectuals and cultural criticism stayed very skeptical about mass consumption and Americanization. It is important to remember that the new possibilities of purchasing and the experience of auence caused a transposition of some of the qualities of nationhood onto the social market economy as discursive formation (p. 245). In his conclusion, Betts takes up the pop culture nostalgia for the 1950s during the 1970s and 1980s. The new national myth of the 1950s functioned as the basis for a new, positive West German identity. This romanticization even intensied after 1989, when former East and West Germany worked out their respective postwar cultural narratives. Negative aspects, e.g., refugee problems, disadvantaging of women, or discrimination against guest-workers, were only slowly integrated into this emotive mix of memory and desire. Paul Betts has surely reached his goal to help revise the on-going materialization of West German history in recent books and exhibitions (p. 263).

The pleasure of reading this book is only interrupted by some overly detailed ashbacks to the history of the nineteenth century, several avoidable mistakes in the German citations and a few too-supercial formulations. Bettss rich case study is particularly strong through its sensitive analysis of product photographs, which contributes to the history of the visualization of modern culture during the twentieth century. But the concentration on high design culture and its institutions also leads to a structural marginalization of the predominant popular culture of the time. Due to this perspective, the arguments of the last two chapters are a bit less convincing. The rich material of this excellent study leads to a number of further questions, of which I only want to name three here: First, the important comparative history of East and West German industrial design still has to be written. The respective references to the other part of Germany are prevailing over the radical incongruity of Cold War design cultures (p. 19). Further comparisons with other European countries, especially Italy, or with the United States, are most promising as well, and they could help to answer the question what was so distinctively German about the 1950s West German industrial design and its cultural representations. Second, the relationship between high and low culture could be investigated in a dierent way, even if this question is close to the epistemological limits of the work of the cultural historian. My last question refers to the relations among the dierent branches of art: especially architecture is important for the understanding of East and West Germanys postwar cultural history, and the interrelationship of the two spheres of architecture and industrial design could provide further insights into material conditions of postwar culture. If we learn from this book that style matters, then we simultaneously realize that it is more the visual representation of the design object, than the form itself, that constitutes cultural meaning. Note [1]. Dingbefremdung. Die Kultur der Dinge neue Erfahrungen und Modellierungen, conference at the University of Tbingen, November 26-28, u 2004; and Im Reich der Dinge. Das Museum als Erkenntnisort, conference at the Stiftung Deutsches Hygiene-Museum Dresden und Max-Planck-Institut fr Wissenschaftsgeschichte Berlin, Dresden, May 6u 8, 2004.

H-Net Reviews

If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the list discussion logs at: http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl. Citation: Stephanie Warnke. Review of Betts, Paul, The Authority of Everyday Objects: A Cultural History of West German Industrial Design. H-German, H-Net Reviews. March, 2005. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10310 Copyright 2005 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprot, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial sta at hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.