20th century german culture
20th century industrial design
A01=Paul Betts
architects
Author_Paul Betts
automobiles
bauhaus
braun
Category=AMX
Category=NHD
cold war politics
commodity aesthetics
consumer appliances
consumer groups
cultural identity
cultural studies
design
designers
domestic modernity
economic recovery
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
furniture
germany
historical
industrial culture
industry
institutional life
international modernism
materialism
modernism
modernity
moral regeneration
nation state
politics
postwar germany
social reform
visual culture
werkbund
west germany
Product details
- ISBN 9780520253841
- Weight: 499g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 07 Dec 2007
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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 groups - including the state and industry, architects and designers, consumer groups and museums, as well as publicists and women's organizations - 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).
