Braun Design, National Socialism, and the Creation of West German Culture, 1933-1975

FAIN: FEL-302800-25

Patrick Greaney
University of Colorado, Boulder (Boulder, CO 80303-1058)

Research and writing leading to a book on the cultural history of the German manufacturer Braun from the beginning of the Nazi regime through the 1970s in the Federal Republic of Germany. 

This project examines the history of the German manufacturer Braun and its canonical design style. Braun was a global pioneer in the use of modernist design in mass-produced consumer products, and the firm’s designs are held in museum collections around the world. Drawing on extensive archival research, I reconstruct the company’s troubling record during the National Socialist era, and I argue that its branding efforts and military production during World War II enabled its postwar success. My project contributes to scholarly and public debates about the tensions between past and present that shaped West Germany’s first decades, and it transforms the history of a design style that remains influential today. My project enriches the humanities through its study of design as an important way of establishing cultural values.