Wilhelm Deffke

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Wilhelm Deffke (born April 23, 1887 in Elberfeld , today a district of Wuppertal ; † August 28, 1950 in Woltersdorf ; full name: Wilhelm Friedrich Deffke ) was a German commercial artist and advertising artist.

Life

Wilhelm Deffke, after completing his drawing training at the craft and applied arts school in Elberfeld , attended the book design class from 1904 to early 1907 , which was headed by the Dutch art bookbinder JA Loeber . This was followed by study trips to the Netherlands with Jan Thorn Prikker , Jan Toorop and Chris Lebeau.

From 1909 to 1910 Deffke worked as an artistic assistant for graphics, figural composition and architecture in Peter Behrens ' studio . Here he met Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe . From 1910 to 1912 Deffke taught the subjects of the book trade and batik at the Reimann School in Berlin , where he made the acquaintance of Julius Klinger . From 1913 to 1914 Wilhelm Deffke and Carl Ernst Hinkefuß worked for the Berlin company Otto Elsner. Here they also designed printing documents for the HAPAG high-speed steamship Imperator .

During the First World War , Deffke founded the Wilhelmwerk advertising studio together with Hinkefuß in Berlin in 1916 - the care facility for German craftsmanship . In 1918 Deffke and Hinkefuß published the programmatic work Trademarks and Trademarks , in which they emphasized the advertising effectiveness of the trademark . At the end of 1919 Wilhelm Deffke ended the studio partnership with Hinkefuß in order to set up his own studio for advertising graphics and architecture, which he ran until 1925. 1923 marriage to Grete Nickel, 1924 birth of the daughter Traute. At the end of 1924 Deffke was appointed director of the exhibition Der Zucker on the recommendation of the Magdeburg city ​​planning officer Bruno Taut . On October 16, 1925, Wilhelm Deffke took over the management of the Magdeburg School of Applied Arts and Crafts . During this time he was also responsible for the artistic appearance of the German Theater Exhibition 1927 in Magdeburg's Rotehornpark , for which Karl Schulpig had designed the poster. Wilhelm Deffke was also appointed professor in 1927. After taking power in 1933, he joined the NSDAP . In 1935 he was dismissed as director of the School of Applied Arts, which he was able to head again as director from 1946 to 1950 after the Second World War . On March 18, 1950, Ernst Reuter awarded him the City of Berlin Art Prize . Deffke developed extensive corporate design concepts for companies such as Reemtsma (cigarettes, 1919–23), Rückforth (food, cosmetics, 1922–24) and Tesma (tobacco products, 1922–24). Deffke saw the logo as the basis for all commercial advertising media. By 1950 he designed over 10,000 company and product logos, which were characterized by a functional and abstract design language. The American design critic and publicist Steven Heller described it as the Father of Modern Logo .

Wilhelm Deffke's estate (including 4,000 logo designs filmed in March / April 1945) is managed by the Bröhan Design Foundation (BDF), a non-profit foundation based in Berlin.

Exhibitions

  • 2013: Museum Folkwang , Essen: Corporate Design: The logo pioneer Wilhelm Deffke (1887 - 1950). In cooperation with the Bröhan Design Foundation, Berlin.

literature

  • Deffke, Wilhelm . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 1 : A-D . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1953, p. 531 .
  • Literary Bureau of the Hamburg-America Line (Hrsg.): Imperator at sea. Commemorative sheets for the first voyage of the steamship Imperator on June 11, 1913. Graphics by Wilhelm Deffke. Hapag, Hamburg 1913.
  • Catalog of the exhibition Companions - Contemporaries. Altes Museum, Berlin 1979, DNB 800743431 .
  • Catalog of the exhibition Everyday + Epoch. Henschelverlag, Berlin 1984, DNB 850064090 .
  • Catalog of the exhibition P40. Posters from the GDR. Association of Graphic Designers of the GDR and Lower Saxony Ministry for Federal and European Affairs: Berlin 1990, pp. 2 and 29, ISBN 978-3-8758-5184-7 .
  • Norbert Eisold: The arts and crafts school Magdeburg 1793-1963 . Exhibition catalog. Magdeburg 1993, ISBN 3981365232 .
  • Bröhan Design Foundation: Wilhelm Deffke. Pioneer of the modern logo . Scheidegger and Spiess Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-85881-392-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Harry Waibel : Servants of many gentlemen: Former Nazi functionaries in the Soviet Zone / GDR. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-631-63542-1 , p. 66.
  2. ↑ Contribution by Steven Heller In: Baseline, 49, from 2006
  3. ^ Bröhan Design Foundation: Wilhelm Deffke. Pioneer of the modern logo . Scheidegger and Spiess Verlag, Berlin 2014
  4. ↑ Catrin Lorch: The elephant with the E. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung No. 37 of February 14, 2014, p. 11.
personal data
SURNAME Deffke, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Deffke, Wilhelm Heinrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German commercial artist and advertising artist
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Elberfeld , Rhineland
DATE OF DEATH August 28, 1950
Place of death Woltersdorf