Bernd Polster

Bernd Polster 2009

Bernd Polster (born June 22, 1952 in Celle ) is a German publicist and artist.

Live and act

Bernd Polster attended the Hermann-Billung-Gymnasium in Celle . During his school days he got to know Möller through the joint work on the school newspaper bi RWLE Möller , with whom he continued to work later. The second edition of the newspaper was recognized by the state of Lower Saxony as the “best school newspaper of 1970”, the third edition was banned.

During his studies at the Ruhr University in Bochum and at the University of Bonn , he dealt with the "criticism of bourgeois science". In his diploma thesis, Knowledge as a Prerequisite for Scientific Learning, using the example of a psychological seminar , he examined the inadequacies of academic psychology. Parallel to his studies, he turned to art and photography. This was followed by exhibitions with collages, drawings and photos of punk musicians and closed gas stations. He has been working as a freelance writer since 1980. In the 1990s he founded the “office for book culture” (later “Howard Buchproduktion”, today “office formweh”) and developed websites such as “formguide” and “bonnweh”.

Bernd Polster lives in Bonn .

Publications

Polster's first book, gas stations. The gasoline story is an exemplary settlement with capitalism. As with all of his later books, he was also responsible for the image research and selection. In the 1980s and 1990s he traveled through Europe as a reportage journalist, including for GEO magazine . He is the writer of television and radio documentaries and has conducted hundreds of interviews. In 1995 he initiated Westwind , a WDR themed week about the Americanization of our lives. He received the RIAS television award for the opening feature Everyday Made in USA .

In his radio documentaries for WDR, NDR , Radio Bremen and Deutschlandfunk , Bernd Polster dealt with artist biographies and phenomena of the multicultural society, for example in his London portraits Calypso in the Cold Land - Nottinghill Carnival and Dance on the Volcano - London Ethnic mix . Both themes also coincide in Requiem for Theresienstadt - The Bohemian Artist Peter Kien .

Polster has published travel guides to Great Britain, southern England and the Caribbean as well as to the cities of London, Prague and Vienna. Here he also took over photography. He also wrote city portraits, including those of Baghdad and Bradford. Finally, he wrote urban history essays for illustrated books about Bonn and Cologne as well as - together with RWLE Möller - an illustrated story of his native city of Celle.

For GEO-Saison he designed, researched and wrote the cultural calendar for six years from 1990, in which European cultural events were presented in short essays, a text form that he later frequently used. He realized this project as well as other books and travel guides with the Englishwoman Mandy Howard, his current wife.

From 2001 he was responsible for the "design page" of the Financial Times Deutschland for several years , for which he developed sections such as objects of contention , a comparison of opposing design solutions, entrepreneurs , a series of entrepreneur portraits and the Legendarium , a critical column about design classics.

The series of design encyclopedias developed by him - together with Mandy Howard and graphic artist Olaf Meyer - in which the design culture of a country (Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Scandinavia and the USA) is presented in five volumes, has been translated into four languages. The Chinese edition appeared in 2009.

His brochures Schule auf Stelzen and WI'R Learn are portraits of educational reform projects . The volumes bauhaus design and Autodesign international are considered standard works. In Is it possible to sit on it? , a satirical design story, he attacks the certainties of the industry.

The book Walter Knoll. Modern furniture brand is a comprehensive company, design and industrial history. In his biography Walter Gropius. As the architect of his fame , he questions Gropius and Bauhaus research. He continued this with the title The True Bauhaus .

Works

Fonts

• Gas stations. The gasoline story. Transit, Berlin 1982.
• with RWLE Möller: The permanent house. History of a penal factory. Transit, Berlin 1984.
• with Astrid Eichstedt: Like the wild ones. Dances at the height of their time. Rotbuch, Berlin 1985.
• Cologne. Vista Point, Cologne 1986.
• Bonn. Vista Point, Cologne 1988.
• Swing Heil. Jazz under National Socialism. Transit, Berlin 1989.
• Vienna. Vista Point, Cologne 1990.
• London. Vista Point, Cologne 1991.
• Southern england. Vista Point, Cologne 1992.
• Caribbean. Lesser Antilles - The South. Vista Point, Cologne 1995.
• Caribbean. Lesser Antilles - The North. Vista Point, Cologne 1995.
• England and Wales. HB-Atlas, Hamburg 1995.
• West Wind - The Americanization of Europe. Dumont, Cologne 1995.
• Super or normal - gas stations. Story of a modern myth. Dumont, Cologne 1996.
• with Phil Patton: Highway. America's endless dream. Dumont, Cologne 1996 (am. Edition 1996).
• Prague. Dumont, Cologne 1997.
• Design dictionary Scandinavia. Dumont, Cologne 1999 (en., Am., Fr. And it. Edition 2000, chinese edition 2009).
• Design dictionary Italy. (Ed.) Dumont, Cologne 1999 (en., Am., Fr. And it. Edition 2000, chinese edition 2009).
• Bonn. Bouvier, Bonn 1998.
• The design book. Munich 1999 (am. 1999 edition).
• Design Lexicon Germany. Dumont, Cologne 2000 (en., Am., Fr. And it. Edition 2001, chinese edition 2009).
• Design Lexicon Great Britain. (Ed.) Dumont, Cologne 2000 (en., Am., Fr. And it. Edition 2001, chinese edition 2009).
• with Björn Springfeldt: Björm Dahlström. Shaper. Swedish Embassy, ​​Berlin 2000.
• Design Lexicon USA. Dumont, Cologne 2002 (Chinese edition 2009).
• with RWLE Möller: Celle. The city book. Edition city book, Bonn 2003.
• International Design Handbook. Cologne 2004.
• Furniture design Germany. Dumont, Cologne 2005.
• Brown. 50 years of product innovations. Dumont, Cologne 2005 (en. Edition 2009).
• Peter Maly Hamburg. Designography. Dumont, Cologne 2007.
• Home design Germany. The classics. Dumont, Cologne 2008 (en. Edition 2008).
• with Ulrike Jaeschke: School on stilts. 1958-2008. The history and prehistory of the Till Eulenspiegel School. Bonn 2008.
• with Volker Fischer and Katja Simon: bauhaus design. The products of the New Objectivity. Dumont, Cologne 2009.
• Peter Ghyczy - Der Evolutionär / The Evolutioner. Dumont, Cologne 2010.
• with Phil Patton: international car design. DuMont, Cologne 2010.
• We learn. Winterhuder reform school. Hamburg 2010.
• And can you sit on it too? How design works. DuMont, Cologne 2011.
• Kronberg meets Cupertino. What Apple and Braun really have in common. In: Apple Design. Catalog. Hamburg 2011 (en. 2011 edition).
• Murano. Classic of Italian glass design. (Ed.) Dumont, Cologne 2012.
• Tango mania. The first wave of dance. In: APuZ, Bonn 2013.
• Walter Gropius. The architect of his fame. Hanser, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-446-26263-8 .
• Walter Knoll. Modern furniture brand. teNeues, Kempen 2019, ISBN 978-3-96171-098-0 .
• The real Bauhaus. teNeues, Kempen 2019, ISBN 978-3-96171-121-5 .

broadcast

• I was such a stormy man. The expression dancer Jean Weidt . WDR 1986.
• The heather is green. A landscape changes . Radio Bremen 1986.
• Celle fame. A German city from A to Z . Radio Bremen 1987.
• Calypso in the cold land. London's Notting Hill Carnival . WDR 1987.
• The wall wobbles. Like the Allies also won musically . WDR 1988.
• Small red brick. The Vienna Municipal Courts . WDR 1987.
• Requiem for Theresienstadt. The bohemian artist Peter Kien . WDR 1990.
• Bohemian blues. The musical prelude to the revolution . WDR 1991.
• Dance on the volcano. London's ethnic mix . WDR 1992.
• Bollywood. British-Indian pop music . DLF 1993.
• Trinidad tiger. The Calypso King . WDR 1993.
• Swing Heil! Youth protest under National Socialism . WDR 1994.
• Rabatz in the Biedermannsland. The rock and roll revolt . WDR 1994.
• Westside story 1: America's protest culture factory . WDR 1995.
• Westside story 2: America lifestyle factory . WDR 1995.
• The Kanakenkartel. Turkish rap from Germany . WDR 1996.
• Guest performance in Baghdad. A journey into the realm of evil . NDR 2002.
• Generation ghetto. South Asians in the UK . WDR and DLF 2003.
• The invention of the gas station . Deutschlandradio 2012.
• The architect of his fame. Walter Gropius and the modern age . WDR 2013.
• Something new in the west. The Bauhaus and its masterminds . WDR 2019.

watch TV

• The German forest. Cultural stories . WDR 1994.
• The gas station. Cultural stories . WDR 1993.
• The whiteners. 75 years of detergents . WDR 1986.
• 50 years of German occupation of Czechoslovakia . WDR 1989.
• 25 years of accident research . WDR 1989.
• The heather was green. Hermann Loens . WDR 1986.
• Little red brick builds the big world. Red Vienna . WDR 1987.
• West wind. Everyday life made in the USA . WDR 1995.
• Like the savages. A dance story in 4 episodes . WDR 1989.

Exhibitions

• Love , installation in the series Kunst im Kiosk, Bonn 1979
• I want to be a chicken , concept exhibition with RWLE Möller and Harald Reiterer, Nordstadtgalerie, Wuppertal 1979
• Ladies and gentlemen , drawings in the servants' house, Bonn 1980
• The company , photographs in the casino of the Science Center, Bonn 1981
• Collages , Sterntaler, Bonn 1981
• Refueling , photos at Schröder & Guddat - Literature Art Music, Berlin 1981
• Pictures by RWLE Möller and Bernd Polster , Künstlerhaus Hannover 1983
• bildweh , Kult41 Bonn 2014
• Winchelsea. 28 breakwaters , photos by Bernd Polster, Kunstbäckerei Bonn 2015
• Kelbassa , drawings, photos and collages, Kulturcafe next door, Winsen an der Aller 2016

Web links

• Literature by and about Bernd Polster in the catalog of the German National Library
• Website by Bernd Polster

Individual evidence

1. ^ Intimidation and censorship: The ban on the school newspaper "bi" 1971. In: Revista. Left newspaper for politics and culture from Celle. No. 39, Celle 2008, pp. 15-20.
2. ↑ The sense of smell also got its money's worth. In: Bonner Rundschau. 3rd November 1979
3. ↑ Nice appearance of the show. In: Westdeutsche Zeitung. September 14, 1979
4. ↑ People in the social environment. In: Bonner Rundschau. 20th December 1980
5. ↑ Work is definitely worth looking at. In: Generalanzeiger. April 27, 1981
6. ↑ Denounce deception. In: Bonner Rundschau. June 6, 1981
7. ↑ Refueling relics of the boom. In: The daily newspaper. November 9, 1981
8. ↑ Images to think along with. In: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung. November 23, 1983
9. ↑ Event Single View on kult41.net
10. ↑ Winchelsea - 28 Wellenbrecher - Bernd Polster ( Memento of the original from March 30, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on kunstbaeckerei.com 
11. ↑ Aneka Schult: Childhood Paradise. In: Cellesche Zeitung . June 15, 2016