Midgard light
The Midgard Licht GmbH is a lighting company, resulting from the established 1912, 1919 by Curt Fischer (1890-1956) inherited and newly aligned business industry work Auma Ronneberger & Fischer has developed. Curt Fischer is considered the inventor of steerable light. Among other things, the studios and apartments in the Bauhaus Dessau were furnished with his lights .
The genesis
In 1919 Curt Fischer, one of the great engineers and designers of the 20th century, took over the Auma industrial plant in Auma, Thuringia , which manufactured machines for the production of industrial porcelain. He added Ronneberger and Fischer to the company name in memory of Konrad Ronneberger, who founded the factory in 1912 and died in the war three years later.
The invention of steerable light
With the end of the First World War , industrialization picked up speed. They worked a lot and worked until late at night. The daylight was no longer sufficient and the ceiling and pendant lights that were common at the time only provided light from above. The result: one shaded the workplace and thus the workpiece with one's body. For a tinkerer like Curt Fischer - he had turned carriages into mobile radio stations during the war and helped develop the communication devices for the Zeppelin - an exciting challenge. As early as November 1919, he had a solution ready: he was granted a patent for his movable universal wall arm, a scissor lamp, effective November 26, 1919. With one hand you can pull the light towards you, turn the head of the lamp and adjust it in order to direct the light cone in the desired way onto the workplace or the workpiece to be manufactured. If you let go of the wall bracket, it doesn't snap back, but stays - and with it the light - exactly where you need it.
Other lights followed the design. The most famous: the model no. 113, which was also called the “whip” due to its curved rod and was soon to move into the newly built Bauhaus Dessau, as well as the model no. 114 and the machine lamp with Fischer's patent, the maintenance-free joints that developed from these two precursors around 1937.
These joint lights are what made Curt Fischer the inventor of steerable light. And not only that: in 1922 he produced the first glare-free reflector - rotatable and asymmetrical - that provided optimally directed light and protected the eyes of those who worked in the light.
Curt Fischer had the patents and other property rights, of which he had acquired around 160 acquired by his death in 1956, registered in his name. His son Wolfgang Fischer later had patents registered under the name "Midgard". After the return of the company, which was nationalized in the GDR in 1972, he named the brand under which the industrial plant Auma Ronneberger & Fischer manufactured its lights.
The brand name
Midgard is the Germanic word for world or earth. During Curt Fischer's lifetime, Nordic mythology was very en vogue, which explains the name. A look at the logo of the time allows different interpretations: A sun is protected from a snake by a triangle - possibly the abstraction of a reflector. In front of the Midgard serpent, which, according to legend, is up to mischief in the great ocean that surrounds Midgard - and is ultimately defeated by the god Thor. The myth goes that the light-shy Midgard serpent wanted to poison the sky. And so the logo could mean that Curt Fischer's lights should keep evil away, which would underline their performance. Perhaps the snake is also an allusion to the mobility of the “Midgard” lights or the Auma river.
history
1920-1956
Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer are considered great admirers of the “Midgard” lights . Not only the Bauhaus studios were equipped with them, but also some of the Dessau Masters' Houses, especially the living room in the Gropius house. Between 1927 and 1931 Gropius and Fischer were in correspondence, whereby Fischer often turned to Gropius for advice and he willingly supported him. Exhibition projects and facilities by Gropius, Breuer and many architects and designers at the Bauhaus and beyond were subsequently equipped with Midgard lights,
Statements from contemporary witnesses and the documents from the archive of the Ronneberger & Fischer company speak for the fact that Curt Fischer was not a supporter of the National Socialists. For example, in traditional letters of the time, Fischer refrained from the usual greeting phrases. He succeeded in preventing his company from becoming an armaments factory; even during the war, it limited itself to the production of lights.
The "Midgard" products, simply but continuously advertised, became increasingly popular. In spite of a lack of raw materials, Curt Fischer also designed lights for living areas and developed his designs further. A variation of the scissor light was given an almost two meter long wall arm, ideal for illuminating drawing and card tables. Among other things, such a model was located in the premises of the Blohm + Voss shipyard . The Bauhaus student and designer Marianne Brandt , who also designed lamps, once wrote: "We later envied the inventors of the Midgard lamp arm - our lamp was adjustable, but not so elegant."
1956-1989
After the death of his father (1956), Wolfgang Fischer (born 1924) took over the Ronneberger & Fischer company until it was expropriated in 1972. The company was renamed and restructured: VEB Industrieleuchtenbau Auma was affiliated to VEB Raumuchte Zeulenroda and subordinated to the production area. On the one hand, Curt Fischer's machine lights continued to be produced in the Auma part of the business, saving so much in terms of material quality that little was left of his achievements. On the contrary: While its two-screw joints were once actually maintenance-free, those who bought a machine light in GDR times often put a wrench next to it. Because the joints were now so easily processed that the screws had to be tightened constantly. In addition - and mainly - a product was produced that should prove to be an international success: the spring light for Ikea .
1989-2014
After the reunification, the company was re-privatized. In the course of the monetary union, the cooperation with Ikea could no longer be maintained because production costs rose. Labor and materials were no longer subsidized. Wolfgang Fischer Manufactum succeeded in winning over a qualitatively improved and therefore higher quality spring-loaded lamp, now made entirely of metal. It was also a historic achievement that in the 1990s, when manufacturing the machine lamp, he again oriented himself on the designs of his father. An important basis for the development of Midgard today. Another sign of Wolfgang Fischer's foresight: even in the difficult 1970s and 1980s, he had trademarks and patent rights, which involved substantial payments to the GDR's patent office. This was the only way in 1989 that the Midgard-Licht GmbH company could emerge from the “Midgard” brand.
Wolfgang Fischer headed Midgard-Licht GmbH for twelve years, albeit without long-term economic success. So he asked his stepdaughter Anja Specht for help. From 2002 to 2008 she realigned the company with the help of her sister Susi Reifenstahl. The new owners brought Curt Fischer's steering lights back onto the market, expanded the product range and won design awards. After Anja Specht left, these initiatives remained unsuccessful.
From 2015
In 2015, David Einsiedler and Joke Rasch, the founders of the Hamburg furniture company "Ply", took over the rights to the three classic Midgard lighting series (machine lights, steering lights and spring-loaded lights), the production tools and the company archive with hundreds of original drawings, photos and letters. The two entrepreneurs relocated the company, which had previously been based in Auma in Thuringia, along with production to Hamburg. Here the production line was built from scratch, modernized and put back into operation using original tools and machines.
In January 2017, the two furniture and lighting experts started to resume production of Curt Fischer's machine lamp. First produced around 1930, it is one of the early articulated lights of classic modernism. “We build in a historical context,” explain David Einsiedler and Joke Rasch - and thus shed light on a piece of forgotten design history.
literature
- Justus A. Binroth: "Special lighting devices Midgard System Fischer" - engineering lights of the modern , in: Robin Rehm and Christoph Wagner (eds.): Design patents of the modern 1840-1970 , Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin, 2019, ISBN 978-3-7861 -2722-2 , pp. 88-97
- Thomas Edelmann: One hundred years of steerable light - the origin and topicality of movable lighting, Hamburg , Berlin, 2019, booklet for the exhibition of the same name at the MAKK Cologne from 14.01. - 24.02. 2019 (1st edition) and in the Museum für Kunst & Gewerbe Hamburg, from January 30, 2020 to June 1, 2020, ISBN 978-3-00-061813-0
- Robin Rehm: The function-oriented development process of the Midgard lamps by Curt Fischer: The four patents , in: Robin Rehm: The Bauhaus building in Dessau - The aesthetic categories Purpose Form content , Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin, 2005, ISBN 3-7861-1430 -7 , pp. 62-64
- Anja Specht and Klaus Struve: The Auma industrial plant in Thuringia . In: Restaurator im Handwerk, 2/2015, pp. 20–25 ( digitized version )
- Anja Specht, Klaus Struve: Light and lighting at every workplace. Design and production of the system of Midgard steering lamps by Curt Fischer in Auma , Thuringia , in: Door open - light on !: Lights and door fittings 1900–1960: Book accompanying the exhibition of the same name in the museum village of Cloppenburg - Lower Saxony open-air museum from November 6, 2016 to March 31, 2017 . Museumsdorf Cloppenburg - Lower Saxony Open Air Museum, Cloppenburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-938061-36-7 , p. 64-73 .
- Matthias Wenzel, Anja Specht: Midgard-Leuchten - 100 years of steerable light , in: Thüringer Museum für Elektrotechnik Erfurt eV, Newsletter On.line, 5, 2019, pp. 12–18 ( digitized version )
- Midgard Archive, Hamburg
Individual evidence
- ↑ Works Bauhaus Dessau 1925-1929. In: mariannebrandt.de. Retrieved February 15, 2017 .
- ↑ Homepage | PLY unestablished furniture. In: ply.de. Retrieved February 15, 2017 .