Heinrich König (entrepreneur)

August Julius Heinrich (Harry) König (born October 31, 1889 in Leipzig ; † October 1, 1966 in Mannheim ) was a German entrepreneur, scientist, author and consultant for industrial design . König was one of the sponsors of the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau. In 1928 he co-founded the art service of the Protestant church in Dresden . After 1945 he was involved in the re-establishment of the Deutscher Werkbund , in 1950 in the establishment of the first German “Wohnberatung” in Mannheim and in 1951 in the establishment of the German Design Council. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts .

Live and act

Heinrich König was born on October 31, 1889 as the son of Dr. Carl Albert Heinrich König (1857–1901) and his wife Clara Marx (1866–1890) were born in Leipzig. He studied chemistry and political science at the University of Göttingen , the University of Dresden and the University of Kiel . After a long study trip through Southeast Asia in 1913/14, he interrupted his studies during the First World War to take over the management of his father's chemical factory. In 1917/18 he worked for a short time in the branch of the Foreign Office in Brussels. In 1920 he received his doctorate in Kiel with a law and political science thesis on "Belgian capital investments in Italy". From 1920 to 1925 he was in charge of the Chemische Fabrik Dessau GmbH. In 1921 he married Maria Elisabeth Schniewind (1895–1927). The daughter Elisabeth König, married Dietz (1923–2019), was born in Dessau. Their children Micaela Grohé, Matthias Dietz and Simone Dietz are grandsons of Heinrich König.

Sponsor of the Bauhaus

From 1919 onwards, König made himself familiar with the ideas of the Bauhaus by traveling to Weimar . His wife Maria Elisabeth Schniedwind from Elberfeld was also familiar with the Bauhaus. Heinrich König visited the Bauhaus Week in Weimar several times in 1923 and made friends with Walter Gropius and Lyonel Feininger . Together with the Anhalt state curator Ludwig Grote , König campaigned in Dessau for the city administration to take over the Bauhaus under the direction of Mayor Fritz Hesse . Walter and Ise Gropius lived in his house until the Masters' Houses in Dessau were completed.

In 1927 Heinrich König took over the general agency of Bauhaus GmbH in Dresden, later also the agency of the Weimar State Building College , headed by Otto Bartning . He was an advisor to the Free State of Saxony for handicrafts. He sold their textiles and products through his company, the “Architekturbedarf” affiliated to Galerie Neue Kunst Fides . In some cases, such as Wilhelm Wagenfeld's Bauhaus lamp , he also organized its production. He also planned this for Marcel Breuer's tubular steel furniture. Instead, Breuer and Kalman Lengyel founded the company Standardmöbel, without consulting Gropius. This led to the “Breuer crisis” in April 1927. In 1928, König was co-founder of the art service of the Protestant church in Dresden . In the founding phase he belonged to the circle of friends or the working committee of the art service. After 1933 he limited himself “to the representation of special construction products”. According to Nazi terminology, he was considered a half-Jew, was also slightly disabled as a result of a polio illness and led a life in the greatest possible inconspicuousness during the Nazi era.

Activities for the Werkbund and the German Design Council

In August 1945 he re-founded the German Werkbund in Dresden together with Will Grohmann and Stephan Hirzel . Until the forced dissolution by the Soviet military administration in Germany , he was its managing director. At the same time, König wrote a programmatic publication “On the tasks of the German Werkbund”. The joint project to re-establish the State College for Craft Art under Grohmann's leadership failed. In 1947 Otto Bartning appointed Heinrich König to Heidelberg to head a new “Housing Requirement” department of the Evangelical Relief Organization, which, in collaboration with modern architects, was supposed to develop practical household appliances for refugees and settlers. After the currency reform , the project came to a standstill. In Mannheim he participates in projects to found a college for design based on the Bauhaus model. From 1947 to 1964 Heinrich König was honorary managing director of the Deutscher Werkbund, first in Württemberg-Baden, later in Baden-Württemberg. In 1949 he organized the first Werkbund exhibition after the war in Cologne entitled “New Living”. Based on the Swedish model, “Die Gute Form , a permanent exhibition of the Deutscher Werkbund and the Städtische Kunsthalle Mannheim” was created in 1950 in a city block of flats in Mannheim . Led by the architect Klara Seiff, “preferably inexpensive things” were shown there, which König said were “affordable for a wide range of interior designers.” Through his contacts with the British Council of Industrial Design in London, König was responsible for the decision of the Bundestag in 1951 involved, which led to the founding of the German Design Council in 1953 and of which he was a member from the start. In 1954 he undertook a. a. with Jupp Ernst , Gunther Fuchs, Karl Otto and Emil Rasch , a study trip to the USA to get to know the training of industrial designers there. In 1956 he was referred to in “Who's Who in Germany” as “consultant for industrial design”. In 1958 he defined the term "industrial design". He transferred the term “industrial” to “commercial” in order to include not only industry and manufacture, that is, series production, but also small-scale handicrafts or unique items. With this view he was way ahead of his time. At that time, the sole focus of design on industry was considered contemporary. Today, under the sign of post-industrial production processes with individual batch sizes, possibilities from 3D printing to participatory design, King’s open determination is extremely topical. He published numerous articles in daily newspapers and specialist magazines at home and abroad on the subject of “New Living and Modern Industry”. Today they are worth reading as historical documents that brought drafts of modern design to a large audience. His subject areas included architecture, congress and exhibition reports, each of which incorporated personal experiences, as well as personally shaped trade fair reports. Today mainly known to experts, he was one of the defining figures of the German Werkbund in the post-war period. Numerous current research projects refer to his life and work.

Selected writings by Heinrich König

• Wilhelm Wagenfeld - from the Bauhaus to industry. In: Johann Klöcker (Ed.): Contemporary form. Industrial design international. Munich 1967, p. 169f.
• The Bauhaus yesterday and today. In: bauhaus, Idea - Form - Purpose - Time, Documents and Statements. göppinger galerie, Frankfurt am Main 1964, pp. 70–74; reprinted in: Eckhard Neumann (Hrsg.): Bauhaus and Bauhäusler - Memories and Confessions. Cologne 1985, pp. 180-185; reprinted in: Magdalena Droste, Boris Friedewald (eds.): Our Bauhaus - Bauhaus and friends remember. Munich 2019, pp. 177–180.
• Bauhaus ideas continue to be fruitful. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. November 12, 1964, p. 25.
• Industrial design. In: Concise dictionary of business administration. 3., completely reworked. Edition. Volume II, Stuttgart 1958, columns 1987-1993.
• The development of design in Germany. In: Central Office for the Promotion of German Workmanship eV (Ed.): Designed industrial form in Germany. A selection of elegant products at the German Industrial Fair in Hanover 1954. Düsseldorf 1954.
• Industrial mold development in Germany. In: Dt. Kunstrat (ed.): The situation of the fine arts in Germany. Stuttgart / Cologne 1954, pp. 100–122.
• Industrial design in USA. Experiences from a study trip. In: Graphics. No. 8, 1955, pp. 314-318.
• Furniture - The first German housing advice center in Mannheim. In: Werk. Vol. 40, No. 11, 1953, pp. 206-208.
• German usage forms. In: The work. Vol. 39, No. 8, 1952, pp. 262-264.

literature

• Anke Dietrich: Will Grohmann in the context of art and cultural policy in post-war Germany (1945–1948). (Mag. Thesis TU Dresden). Dresden 2013.
• Magdalena Droste: The Bauhaus lamp by Carl Jacob Jucker and Wilhelm Wagenfeld. Frankfurt am Main 1997, pp. 32-39.
• Magdalena Droste: The art service - arts and crafts between church and Nazi state. In: Jürgen Krause, Klaus-Jürgen Sembach (Red.): The useful modern age - graphic & product design in Germany 1935–1955. Münster 2000, p. 116.
• Fritz Hesse: Memories of Dessau. Volume 1, Bad Pyrmont / Munich 1963.
• Beate Manske: Two lamps are never the same. Wilhelm Wagenfeld in the metal workshop of the State Bauhaus Weimar. In: Klaus Weber (ed.): The metal workshop at the Bauhaus. Berlin 1992, p. 86.
• Dieter Kusske: Between art, cult and collaboration - The German church-related 'art service' 1928 to 1945 in context. (Diss. Univ. Bremen). Bremen 2012, p. 211.
• Christopher Oestereich: 'good form' in reconstruction - On the history of product design in West Germany after 1945. (Univ. Diss., Cologne 1998). Berlin 2000.
• Christopher Oestereich: 'New Living' - The Cologne Werkbund Exhibition 1949. In: History in the West. Issue 1, 2000, pp. 58, 64.
• Christoph Wowarra: Cabinet on Ferdinandplatz of Neue Kunst Fides GmbH and Architekturbedarf GmbH Dresden. In: Olaf Thormann (Ed.): BAUHAUS Saxony. Stuttgart 2019, pp. 116–120.

Quotes

“ He was considered to be one of the few experts who did not see design in isolation, but saw it in its context, and who was impartial and critical of his opinion. "

- journal form

“ Heinrich König was a realist of a rare dimension. In a profound, confessing, socially critical, economically critical, spiritually and spiritually independent manner, he was a Christian realist, very old, very new, and currently not common. "

- Hans Schwippert

Web links

• Astrid Bähr: Bauhaus100 - Heinrich König 1927–1930 general agent of Bauhaus GmbH . (accessed on May 21, 2019)

swell

1. ↑ Eckhard Neumann (ed.): Bauhaus and Bauhäusler. Cologne 1985, p. 180f.
2. ↑ Magdalene Droste, Boris Friedewald: Our Bauhaus - Bauhaus and friends remember. Munich 2019, p. 180, with additional information
3. ↑ Work and Time. No. 10, 1966, p. 3.
4. ↑ Sabine Kraft: Gropius builds privately. His homes in Dessau (1925/26) and Lincoln, Massachusetts (1938) . Marburg 1997.
5. ^ Magdalena Droste: The furniture of Marcel Breuer. In: Magdalena Droste: Marcel Breuer Design. Cologne 1992, ISBN 3-8228-9759-0 , p. 15f.
6. ↑ Eckhard Neumann (ed.): Bauhaus and Bauhäusler. Cologne 1985, p. 181.
7. ^ Anke Dietrich: Will Grohmann in the context of art and cultural policy in post-war Germany. Dresden 2013, p. 11.
8. ↑ Johannes Michael Wischnath: Church in Action - The Evangelical Relief Organization 1945–1957 and its relationship to the Church and Inner Mission. Göttingen 1986, pp. 382, ​​452.
9. ^ Heinrich König: The first German housing advice center in Mannheim. In: Werk. Vol. 40, Issue 11, 1953, p. 207.
10. ↑ form. Issue 36, 1966, p. 66.
11. ↑ Hans Schwippert: Heinrich König. In: Werk und Zeit - monthly newspaper of the German Werkbund. No. 11, November 1966, p. 3.