German design and architecture reflects the country’s rich and fraught political history in its structure and aesthetic philosophy. Jeremy Aynsley now offers an in-depth study of this relationship between German history and design since 1870 and the complex principles underlying it. Designing Modern Germany reveals how German attitudes toward national identity, modernity and technology are crucial to understanding German design. Aynsley traces the historical development of German design, beginning in the 1870s with the first dedicated Arts and Crafts schools and stretching through to the famous institutions of the Bauhaus and the Ulm Hochschule für Gestaltung. He analyses the works of leading figures such as Peter Behrens and Hannes Meyer, through to Ingo Maurer and Jil Sander, and many others in design specialties including graphics, industrial and furniture design, fashion and architecture. He also offers the first consideration of the contrasting design traditions of East and West Germany between 1949 and 1989. Whether examining the pre-First World War department store, the National Socialist fashion system or East Germany’s official design culture, Designing Modern Germany reveals that German design significantly affected citizens’ daily lives. An essential read for designers and scholars of German design and history, Designing Modern Germany is a key text for understanding Germany’s major contribution to twentieth-century design.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, drastic social and political changes, technological innovations, and exposure to non-Western cultures affected Germany's built environment in profound ways. The economic challenges of Germany's colonial project forced architects designing for the colonies to abandon a centuries-long, highly ornamental architectural style in favor of structural technologies and building materials that catered to the local contexts of its remote colonies, such as prefabricated systems. As German architects gathered information about the regions under their influence in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific—during expeditions, at international exhibitions, and from colonial entrepreneurs and officials—they published their findings in books and articles and organized lectures and exhibits that stimulated progressive architectural thinking and shaped the emerging modern language of architecture within Germany itself. Offering in-depth interpretations across the fields of architectural history and postcolonial studies, Itohan Osayimwese considers the effects of colonialism, travel, and globalization on the development of modern architecture in Germany from the 1850s until the 1930s. Since architectural developments in nineteenth-century Germany are typically understood as crucial to the evolution of architecture worldwide in the twentieth century, this book globalizes the history of modern architecture at its founding moment.

Esra Akcan describes the introduction of modern architecture into Turkey after the Kemalist political elite took power in 1923 and invited German architects to redesign the new capital of Ankara.

This book provides a comprehensive examination of one of the most important modernist traditions. Offering a new interpretation of its origins, Barbara Miller Lane focuses on the movement called 'National Romanticism', which flourished in Germany and Scandinavia from about 1890 to 1920. During this period, painters, interior designers, city planners and architects created a new kind of domestic architecture and interior design, as well as monumental architecture. Drawing upon local and regional folk traditions, and encouraging a simple way of life, architects such as Eliel Saarinen, Hans Poelzig, and Martin Nyrop, looked back to medieval and even prehistoric times for their models, as they also tried to create a new architecture for the new millennium. Their buildings encouraged new kinds of social and political relationships and have had a profound influence in the architecture of Germany and Scandinavia.

While modernism was publicized as a fusion of technology, new materials, and rational aesthetics to improve the lives of ordinary people, it was often out of reach to the very masses it purportedly served. Luxury and Modernism shows how luxury was present in bold, literal forms in modern designs—from lavish materials and costly technologies to deluxe buildings and household objects—and in subtler ways as well, such as social milieus and modes of living. In a period of social unrest and extreme wealth disparity between the common worker and those at the helm of capitalist enterprises generating immense profits, architects envisioned modern designs providing solutions for a more equitable future. Robin Schuldenfrei exposes the disconnect between modernism's utopian discourse and its luxury objects and elite architectural commissions. Despite the movement's egalitarian rhetoric, many modern designs addressed the desires of the privileged individual. Yet as Schuldenfrei demonstrates, luxury was integral not only to how modern buildings and objects were designed, manufactured, and sold, but has contributed to modernism's appeal to this day. This beautifully illustrated book provides a new interpretation of modern architecture and design in Germany during the heyday of the Bauhaus and the Werkbund, tracing modernism's lasting allure to its many manifestations of luxury. Schuldenfrei casts the work of legendary figures such as Peter Behrens, Walter Gropius, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in an entirely different light, revealing the complexities and contradictions inherent to modernism's promotion and consumption.

The 1972 Munich Olympics were intended to showcase the New Germany and replace lingering memories of the Third Reich. In this cultural and political history of the Munich Olympics, the authors set these games into both the context of 1972 and the history of the modern Olympiad.

"No one is likely to underrate the importance for the rest of Europe--and, indeed, for world history--of the German reaction, beginning in the days of Bismarck, to the crisis of modern industrial capitalism," writes Professor Barraclough, "but the peculiar character of that reaction is only comprehensible in the light of Germany's past. Factors deeply rooted in German history . . . constituted an iron framework, a mold within which were cast all German efforts, from 1870 to 1939, to cope with the problems of modern capitalist society."

"Despina Stratigakos is assistant professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York."--BOOK JACKET.

This is the first comprehensive, multi-author survey of German history that features cutting-edge syntheses of major topics by an international team of leading scholars. Emphasizing demographic, economic, and political history, this Handbook places German history in a denser transnational context than any other general history of Germany. It underscores the centrality of war to the unfolding of German history, and shows how it dramatically affected the development of German nationalism and the structure of German politics. It also reaches out to scholars and students beyond the field of history with detailed and cutting-edge chapters on religious history and on literary history, as well as to contemporary observers, with reflections on Germany and the European Union, and on 'multi-cultural Germany'. Covering the period from around 1760 to the present, this Handbook represents a remarkable achievement of synthesis based on current scholarship. It constitutes the starting point for anyone trying to understand the complexities of German history as well as the state of scholarly reflection on Germany's dramatic, often destructive, integration into the community of modern nations. As it brings this story to the present, it also places the current post-unification Federal Republic of Germany into a multifaceted historical context. It will be an indispensable resource for scholars, students, and anyone interested in modern Germany.

A pioneering exploration of the origins of German Christian Democracy in the context of 19th- and 20th-century politics and religion