Rational (tableware service)

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Portion pot Rational

The tableware service Rationell (colloquially Mitropa tableware ) was designed in 1969/1970 by the product designers Margarete Jahny and Erich Müller for VEB Vereinigte Porzellanwerke Colditz . The universally applicable service was widespread in the GDR in restaurants, holiday homes, hotels, factory and school canteens, hospitals and, since the early 1970s, in the Mitropa travel company . The simple, formal design of the robust, stackable and light tableware for the catering trade was awarded a gold medal at the Leipzig trade fair .

History and design concept

In the mid-1960s, the designers Margarete Jahny and Erich Müller were entrusted by the Central Institute for Design with the task of developing universally applicable, attractive, robust and at the same time stackable dishes for the GDR gastronomy. Margarete Jahny used her own design drafts from 1950/1951. As a student project at the Dresden University of Fine Arts , she submitted a design for a stacking service consisting of a coffee pot, two cups, a cream mug and a lid that fits all parts. It was originally designed by Jahny as self-service crockery for company canteens. Since the GDR turned away from formalistic design and the Bauhaus tradition in the 1950s , their design was not included in series production .

In the 1960s, the idea of ​​the stack service was taken up again by Müller and Jahny. Other porcelain manufacturers also devoted themselves to this functional design concept during this time, including Heinz H. Englers with the design of Form B1100 and Form 6200 for Bauscher in Weiden in the Upper Palatinate .

As the first service part, Jahny and Müller presented a coffee setting with pots and cups. The crockery items could be stacked on top of each other in a non-slip manner. Margarethe Jahny designed a spout for the coffee pot, which was shaped so that the coffee could not drip after pouring it. A characteristic feature of the Rationell jugs, however, was the shape of the lid designed by Erich Müller, which was precisely shaped with a protruding inner edge over the outer edge of the jug so that it could not fall off even when the jug was tilted. This shape of the lid, which required a high level of precision during manufacture, initially presented the Colditz porcelain works with major manufacturing problems. Erich Müller applied for a patent for the design of the lid . Before the patent was registered, however, the tableware was presented at the Leipzig Trade Fair in 1969 and presented to West German sales representatives. Within a few months, the anti-slip lid was implemented by the Bauscher company for the form 6200 and, much to Erich Müller's annoyance, applied for a Bauscher patent .

The Rational tableware service developed into an omnipresent mass product in restaurants and public canteens in the GDR. In order to be able to meet the great demand, the tableware was also manufactured in the porcelain factories in Kahla , Ilmenau and Stadtlengsfeld , as the production capacity of VEB Vereinigte Porzellanwerke Colditz was not sufficient to meet the demand.

Rational crockery service with green wordmark for Mitropa dining car

Although the tableware was omnipresent in public institutions in the GDR, the name of the tableware series and the product designer was largely unknown to the public. The tableware, originally designed for the upscale hotel chain Interhotel , has been used as standard tableware by the Mitropa travel company since the beginning of the 1970s in passenger trains, train station restaurants, motorway service stations and on passenger ships. The slang term Mitropa tableware for the robust tableware series was derived from this.

Designs and decors

The tableware service was first presented in 1969 as a coffee set. In the course of time, numerous crockery items were added. In addition to the portion pot for two cups of coffee, for example, a mocha pot, a tea portion pot and a large coffee pot were also produced in the same design. In the 1970s, the expansion to include parts for a dinner set, including flat and deep dinner plates, soup bowls, dessert and salad bowls, serving plates and meal set bowls for mustard, began. However, the designs for the tableware were only carried out by Margarete Jahny and Erich Müller in the early days. Numerous crockery items go back to independent modifications by factory designers who tried to adapt and implement the design concept to the needs of the catering industry.

In addition to a decor-free, white variant, the two designers, who are linked to the tradition of the Deutscher Werkbund and Bauhaus, presented the service with simple, one- or two-tone stripe and ribbon decorations. Margarete Jahny did not consider floral and naturalistic décor variants, who only provided a color design to support the shape in her design concept. The original drafts are considered to be an example of factual, functional industrial design in the GDR modern era.

Rational mocha cup with blue Mitropa logo

As early as 1972, the decors were fundamentally revised by the office for industrial design - contrary to the ideas of the designers. A selection of different decors, vignettes and signets were designed which were to be used for a wide variety of purposes in the catering trade. For the Mitropa, for example, two decor variants were used: while green Mitropa lettering was used for the standard tableware, a logo with a blue M and a wheel logo was developed for restaurants with a predominantly foreign audience . Word and figurative marks for Rationell tableware have been developed for the Palace of the Republic , Auerbachs Keller , for the consumer and the Centrum department stores , the Charité and the Berlin health service, among others .

The different stripes and ribbon decors were used across the board in restaurants and canteens, while the gold decors were reserved for upscale restaurants.

The Rational tableware service was not initially intended for sale to the general public. As a measure to remedy the shortage of consumer goods in the GDR , it was decided at the end of the 1970s to also sell the coffee pots in retail outlets . For this purpose, the office for industrial design developed “household- friendly” decors that ranged from graphic ornaments , moldings, floral, naturalistic to onion pattern decors. At the same time, the flat decors could also be used to conceal small production and glaze defects that would obviously have appeared as flaws in the case of tableware without decor. Decorated crockery could be sold better and at a higher price in the trade, especially since there was an increased demand for strongly colored decors at home and abroad in the 1970s and decor-free porcelain hardly found buyers at that time. Margarete Jahny later described the use of the colorful and floral decals as "appalling".

reception

After the German reunification , the dishes, which were once widespread across the board, were eliminated almost everywhere. Production of the Rational tableware series was discontinued in 1990. With the onset of the Ostalgie wave in the 1990s, omnipresent GDR everyday objects had an identity-creating function. Rational tableware has become a cult and collector's item.

The tableware service Rationalell is shown today in various design museums and museums of everyday culture in the permanent exhibition, including the Grassi Museum for Applied Art , the Munich Pinakothek der Moderne or the GDR Museum .

literature

  • Günter Höhne : I have the lid, but the snout is missing . In: Günter Höhne (ed.): The divided form. German-German design affairs 1949–1989 . Torch bearer, Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-7716-4421-5 , pp. 146-149.
  • Sophia Ludolph: ideologies and pots. The ambivalence of East German product culture using the example of the coffee pot "rational" . In: Society for University Collections e. V. (Ed.): Young Forum for Collection and Object Research , Volume 3, Berlin 2019, ZDB -ID 2913915-6 , pp. 81–91 ( digitized version ; PDF, 409 kB).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sophia Ludolph: Ideologies and jugs. The ambivalence of East German product culture using the example of the coffee pot "rational" . In: Young forum for collection and object research . tape III . Berlin 2019, p. 83 .
  2. ↑ Hein Köster: Margarete Jahny. Shapes for everyday life purposes . In: Britta Jürgs (Ed.): From salt shakers to automobiles: female designers . AvivA, Berlin 2002, ISBN 978-3-932338-16-8 , pp. 163-177 .
  3. ^ A b c Günter Höhne: The divided form: German-German design affairs 1949–1989 . Torch bearer, Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-7716-4421-5 , p. 146 f .
  4. ^ A b Frank Groneberg: Coffee pot from Fürstenberg. August 24, 2012, accessed March 14, 2020 .
  5. ↑ "Hundreds of Variants": Sketch of the Rational portion pot (Fig. 9). In: Contemporary historical research. Retrieved March 14, 2020 .
  6. ↑ RATIONELL green coffee pot - FORMOST. Retrieved March 14, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Sophia Ludolph: Ideologies and jugs. The ambivalence of East German product culture using the example of the coffee pot "rational" . In: Young forum for collection and object research . tape III . Berlin 2019, p. 82 .
  8. ^ Günter Höhne: GDR design . Komet, Cologne 2006, ISBN 978-3-89836-587-1 , p. 132 .
  9. ↑ Anja Steinhorst: Dining while traveling. Eating and drinking around the railroad . Ed .: German Museum of Technology. Berlin 2004, p. 82 .
  10. ↑ a b Aesthetics of the useful. In: Industrieform-DDR. January 30, 2014, accessed March 14, 2020 .
  11. ↑ Sophia Ludolph: Ideologies and jugs. The ambivalence of East German product culture using the example of the coffee pot "rational" . In: Young forum for collection and object research . tape III . Berlin 2019, p. 89 .
  12. ^ A b Günter Höhne: The grace of the rational. Margarete Jahny: metal, glass, ceramics, design for the series 1951–1990 . Ed .: Design Center Saxony-Anhalt. Dessau 1998, ISBN 978-3-930410-10-1 , pp. 58 f .
  13. ↑ Rational jug: variety of decorations (signet, logo). Retrieved March 14, 2020 .
  14. ↑ Siegfried Heinz Begenau: function. Shape. Quality: On the problem of a theory of the creation of design . Ed .: Central Institute for Design. Berlin 1967, p. 59 .
  15. ↑ Imaginative glass and porcelain: offer at the Leipzig trade fair . In: The Schaulade . tape 2/1972 , p. 253 .
  16. ^ Günter Höhne: Penti, Erika and Bebo Sher - classics of GDR design . Schwarzkopf and Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 978-3-89602-320-9 , pp. 63 .
  17. ^ Frank Thomas Grub: Wende and unity in the mirror of German-language literature: a manual . De Gruyter, Berlin 2003, ISBN 978-3-11-020163-5 , pp. 563-573 .
  18. ↑ Kai-Uwe Scholz: Design History. Eat the east. GDR design from Trabbi to tea service. In: Design-Report: Magazine for form and function, meaning and value . tape 2 , 2002, p. 60-65 .

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