Deutscher Werkbund

The Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Federation), founded in 1907 in Munich, was a state-initiated professional association of artists, architects, craftsmen and women, industrialists, and critics dedicated to improving the quality of German design and manufacture. It marked the highpoint of the applied arts movement that had begun in Germany in the 1890s. It was concerned with giving a consistent, symbolic form of expression to a society that had come to be dominated by industrialization, and with developing and propagating high (→) quality design.

The Deutscher Werkbund's focus on good design was basically democratic and socially conscious in nature, and initially articulated at the level of a national folk culture. Since the question of form had significant economic and cultural connotations, the Deutscher Werkbund remained valid as a design movement well into the second half of the twentieth century.

The Werkbund's activities were always characterized in part by the different...