Martin Kelm

Martin Kelm (born October 19, 1930 in Neuhof , Poel Island ) is a German industrial designer , designer and university professor who headed the central government design institutions of the GDR in East Berlin from 1962 to 1990 .

Martin Kelm at an exhibition opening for the Leipzig Autumn Fair 1985

Life

Growing up as a working-class child in Hohen Viecheln ( Mecklenburg ) with five other siblings, Martin Kelm attended elementary and high school from 1936 to 1944; In 1943, the so-called Kinderlandverschickung was carried out with him and in 1944/45 he was trained for the Volkssturm and served in the anti-tank defense on the Eastern Front. In 1945 he was the interpreter of the English village commandant in Hohen Viecheln, and in 1946 he gave private lessons with the village teacher. From 1947 to 1950 he did an apprenticeship as an electrician and worked as a journeyman, from 1950 to 1953 he studied at the school "Design technology - work school for quality and form" in Wismar , which later became the technical school for applied arts in Heiligendamm . In 1953 he married Elli Kelm , née Suhr, who would later become Erich Honecker's secretary for many years .

From 1953 to 1958 he studied at the University of Fine and Applied Arts in Berlin-Weißensee with Rudi Högner, which he graduated with a degree in industrial design. During his studies, as a student spokesman, he successfully campaigned for the newly established subject of design to remain at the university, which, at the instigation of school officials, is to be removed from the range of courses as "industrial cosmetics" that are supposedly non-art. In 1958/59 he was an artistic and scientific assistant at Burg Giebichenstein in Halle and head of the newly founded department "Technical Design" and worked at the Institute for Design and Development of the facility that was converted into a university. In 1961 he was a lecturer for the subject "Technical Design" at the now " University for Industrial Design Halle " called Burg Giebichenstein.

In 1962 he was appointed director of the Institute for Applied Arts Berlin by the Ministry of Culture , which in 1963 was renamed Central Institute for Design (later Central Institute for Design or Office for Industrial Design ). In 1966 he also became Vice President of the Office for Standardization, Metrology and Goods Testing (ASMW) for the newly formed "Design" department. From 1965 to 1970 he did an external traineeship at the Institute for Social Sciences with a dissertation on the subject of “Product Design in Socialism” in the field of art and cultural studies (Dr. phil.). In 1980 he was appointed honorary professor at the University of Industrial Design in Halle, Burg Giebichenstein . From 1972 to 1990 he was Head of the Office for Industrial Design (AIF) at the Council of Ministers of the GDR and in this capacity State Secretary with his own business area. After the dissolution of the AIF on December 31, 1990, he was a freelance company consultant and project manager from 1990 to 1992, particularly on the topics of “ecology and design” and “ecological building”. He has been retired since 1995. He lives in Losten near Bad Kleinen and is involved in citizens' initiatives and environmental protection institutions for ecological and nature-protecting landscape maintenance in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

Practical design work

Radio and television sets (including the “Atelier” television set from 1957 for VEB RAFENA , developed as a student design under the guidance of Rudi Högner), clocks, lights, plastic products, furniture, machines and harbor cranes, for example for VEB Kranbau Eberswalde (1958), architecture and Interior design (including the early 1970s conversion and expansion of the Hubertusstock hunting lodge on the edge of the Schorfheide near Berlin and design and furnishing of the guest houses there).

Awards

• Gold medals from the Ministry of Culture of the GDR for excellent design (1960 and 1964)
• Labor Banner (1974)
• Outstanding Technician (1977)
• Design Award of the GDR (1980)
• Patriotic Order of Merit of the GDR in Gold (1980)

Act

From the mid-1970s, the "design political state functionary" Martin Kelm was repeatedly criticized by freelance designers in the GDR, whose livelihoods were increasingly diminishing in favor of the forced preference of permanent designers in industry. The establishment of design industrial ateliers meant that fewer contracts were awarded to outsiders. In a joint decision by the management of the AIF and the Presidium of the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR at the end of 1970, the equal inclusion of freelancers in solving upcoming design tasks was determined. At the same time, Kelms set about 250 employees in the Office for Industrial Design through continuous public relations, guidance and control in industry and research as well as draft resolutions for the Council of Ministers of the GDR and the Economic Commission at the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED, that design especially in the combines and large companies became a planned, billable variable in product development.

The historical and contemporary collection of testimonials of German industrial culture, founded by Mart Stam in Berlin in the early 1950s , from which the GDR design collection of the AIF grew in the 1970s (later the industrial design collection) , was also decisively expanded and scientifically supervised by Kelm's instruction a comprehensive public international specialist library, photo library, and many thousands of design objects. The reconstruction of the Bauhaus Dessau in the 1970s and the increasing public reception of its legacy is obviously due to Kelm and happened against the resistance of cultural-political hardliners in the GDR.

With the strengthening of the democratic citizens' movement and the change of power in the GDR at the end of 1989 up to the Volkskammer elections in spring 1990 and even after the GDR acceded to the Federal Republic of Germany, Martin and Elli Kelm were suspected of being in connection with their functions in the ruling apparatus SED to have been favorites of the party leadership. Among other things, the nature lover Kelm was held responsible for taking part in hunting parties in the Schorfheide state district at the request of Erich Honecker and was accused of having gained personal material and career advantages. The suspicions against Elli and Martin Kelm had to be dropped after repeated institutional scrutiny in the early 1990s. In 1993 both retired from Berlin to their ancestral home Mecklenburg, where Elli Kelm died in 2008.

Publications

In addition to numerous publications on the theory and practice of design in national and international magazines and lectures at home and abroad, the publication “Product Design in Socialism” was published in 1971 by Dietz-Verlag Berlin on the basis of his dissertation.

Quote: " The task of industrial design is to give the products a necessary aesthetic quality in addition to general quality features; it is aimed at increasing functional, technological, material and economic factors. " (1961)

• Martin Kelm: The importance of the design of industrial products in the developed social system of socialism Inst. F. Social sciences at the ZK d. SED, diss. V. December 15, 1969, Berlin 1969
• Martin Kelm: Product design in socialism Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1971
• Martin Kelm [co-author]: College for Industrial Design Halle - Burg Giebichenstein: 1958 - 1983 College for Industrial Design Burg Giebichenstein, Halle / Saale 1983

literature

• Heinz Hirdina: Design for the series. Design in the GDR 1949 - 1985; Publications by the Office for Industrial Design and the Bauhaus. Berlin / Dresden 1988.
• Günter Höhne, Erika Penti, Bebo Sher: Classics of GDR design, Berlin 2001,
• Günter Höhne: The Great Lexicon of GDR Design, Cologne 2007,
• Günter Höhne: King goatee on the pot market. From the ride of the cultural Stalinists against black jugs, white vases and more, writings of the Hedwig Bollhagen Society, issue 1, Potsdam 2012,
• Siegfried Gronert: Conditionally capable of criticism. Review “Good design. Martin Kelm and the Design Funding in the GDR ”, ed. v. Christian Wölfel, Sylvia Wölfel u. Jens Krzywinski, Dresden 2014. In: designreport 2 (2015), p. 48f. (see reviews at <www.gfdg.org>)

Archival material

• Archive materials from the Office for Industrial Design (AIF) at the Council of Ministers of the GDR, today in the Industrial Design Collection, House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany.
• Archive materials from the Office for Industrial Design (AIF) at the Council of Ministers of the GDR, since 2012 in the holdings of Die Neue Sammlung in the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich as a gift from the Höhne Collection, Berlin.

Web links

• Literature about Martin Kelm in the state bibliography MV