Hans Theo Baumann

Hans Theodor Baumann (born October 27, 1924 in Basel ; † August 6, 2016 in Schopfheim ) was a German designer , primarily for porcelain, ceramics and glass.

Life, work and merit

Hans Theo Baumann was the youngest of nine children of the Basel glass painter Fritz Baumann and his wife Helena Maier. He spent his childhood in the neighboring German town of Weil am Rhein , because his father had given up his job due to lead poisoning and found a new job with the Deutsche Reichsbahn. After an apprenticeship as a textile technician , he first studied from 1943 to 1946 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden . This was followed by studying architecture, urban planning, interior design, modeling, graphics and drawing at the Basel School of Applied Arts / Design . At the same time he learned glass art techniques in Otto Staiger's Basel studio .

In 1947 he moved to the small German town of Schopfheim on the southern edge of the Black Forest, not far from Basel, from where his wife Luise came from. He lived and worked there for around seven decades until his death. He received his first small orders as a glass painter, including in churches. In 1951 he contacted the architect Egon Eiermann , while he was building a plant for the Basel chemical company Ciba AG in the nearby Baden town of Wehr . This led to a collaboration in 1953 on the construction of the Matthäuskirche in Pforzheim , the first concrete church of the post-war period in Germany. For this church Baumann designed the side walls from self-developed concrete glass blocks (thick, colored glasses that are inserted in a grid-like manner in concrete frames) and made the thousands of glass blocks by hand himself. The first altar cross and the baptismal bowl, also made of thick glass, came from Hans Theo Baumann. The windows of the Pforzheimer church were the model for the windows of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, also designed by Eiermann a few years later and created by a French glass artist.

From 1954 Baumann worked as a freelancer for the porcelain manufacturer Philip Rosenthal . The activity for the company Rosenthal lasted until the 1970s. In 1955 Baumann founded his own design studio. Besides Rosenthal, he has now worked for companies such as Thomas, Arzberg , KPM Berlin , Süßmuth and Schönwald . His designs are characterized by clear, geometric shapes, without ornamental decoration, often pure white, with softly rounded corners. The Form Berlin was manufactured by Rosenthal in millions from 1959, supplemented with matching cutlery in the 1960s and is now considered a design classic, as is the stackable grid tableware developed in the 1970s for the galleys of the German airline Lufthansa . Small-scale handicrafts and unique items were also created for Majolika Karlsruhe and for non-European manufacturers such as the porcelain manufactory in Fukagawa , which supplies the Japanese imperial court , where he worked for a long time.

Baumann also designed lights and vases. The first chair produced by the designer furniture manufacturer Vitra was a design by Baumann made of curved Plexiglas . Decors for bed linen, carpets, jewelry, wine labels and much more can also be found in his complete works. In 1958 he received two prizes for glass windows and glass sculptures at the German Pavilion at the World Exhibition in Brussels , which had been designed by Egon Eiermann and Sep Ruf .

In 1959, he co- founded the Association of German Industrial Designers together with the designers Hans Erich Slany , Arno Votteler , Karl Dittert , Herbert Hirche , Günter Kupetz , Rainer Schütze and Peter Raacke and was the founding president of the Association of German Industrial Designers until 1970 . V. As a result, he played a major role in the development of the designer profession. Baumann held a teaching position at the Berlin University of the Arts .

Works by him have been shown in several museums. The New Collection in Munich dedicated a solo exhibition to him in 2003. This design museum has the largest collection of his works thanks to a donation from Baumann. There are also many of his objects in the Vitra Design Museum and in the Museum on Lindenplatz in Weil am Rhein; the Dresden Porcelain Collection , the Badisches Landesmuseum in Karlsruhe and the Museum of Applied Arts in Berlin have more . As a thank you for being granted honorary citizenship in 2014, Baumann donated 125 objects designed by him to the city of Schopfheim, which are permanently on display in a room he set up himself in the city museum.

Honors

Baumann has received numerous awards and honors, including:

• 1985: Professor honoris causa of the HdK Berlin
• 1992 Upper Rhine Culture Prize
• In 2014, his long-standing home town of Schopfheim, in which he had founded an art association and was its president and then honorary president, granted him honorary citizenship.
• The German postal devoted Baumann a special stamp (EUR 1.45) in the series "Design from Germany". It shows glass vessels from 1961/1962 from the holdings of the New Collection in Munich. The first day of issue was December 8, 2016.

literature

• Roswitha Frey: In memory of the designer Hans Theodor Baumann. In: Badische Heimat , issue 4/2016, pp. 632–633. pdf
• Helmut Ricke, Wilfried van Loyen (ed.): Grail glass. German design 1930–1981. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin / Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-422-07013-4 .
• Florian Hufnagel, Rüdiger Joppien, Peter Schmitt: Hans-Theo Baumann. Art and Design 1950–2010. Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-89790-323-4 .
• Roland Kroell : Beauty and function: the industrial designer Hans Theo Baumann from Schopfheim. In: Regio-Magazin, (1997), p. 27ff.
• Volker Kapp: H. Th. Baumann. Art and design. Dr. Wolfram Hitzeroth Verlag, Marburg 1989, ISBN 3-89398-004-0 .
• Wilhelm Siemen (Ed.): H. Th. Baumann. Design 1950–1990. Museum of the German Porcelain Industry , Hohenberg (Eger) 1989, ISBN 3-927793-20-5 .

Web links

• h.th. Baumann. New permanent exhibition opened in the outbuilding of the museum on Lindenplatz. On the homepage of the Weiler Museum on Lindenplatz
• Video with H. Th. Baumann: About his work in Japan
• Roswitha Frey: Designer Hans Theo Baumann dies in Schopfheim - obituary in the Badische Zeitung on August 11, 2016

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Obituary
2. ↑ s. History on the homepage of the Verband Deutscher Industrie Designer e. V.