Deutscher Werkbund

PurplePrice Mag · October 26, 2026 · 3 min read

The Deutscher Werkbund, the "German Association of Craftsmen", was founded in Munich in October 1907. It was promoted by the architect Hermann Muthesius, the politician Friedrich Naumann and the Belgian designer Henry van de Velde; its founding members were twelve artists and twelve companies, including architects such as Joseph Maria Olbrich, Peter Behrens, Richard Riemerschmid and Bruno Paul.

Its statutes set out its aim: to ennoble industrial work "through the cooperation of art, industry and craft". Unlike the Arts and Crafts movement, which rejected the machine, the Werkbund accepted industrial production and wanted to raise its quality. Its motto, Vom Sofakissen zum Städtebau, "from sofa cushions to city-building", shows how wide its field of action was.

Behrens and AEG

The most famous example of this alliance is Peter Behrens's work for AEG, the great Berlin electrical company. In 1907 he became its artistic consultant and designed everything: the trademark, the graphics, the products, such as lamps, fans and kettles, and even the buildings, including the famous turbine factory. It was the first corporate identity in history, and Behrens is considered the first industrial designer. Young architects who would go on to change the twentieth century worked in his studio: Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier.

Cologne 1914: the debate on the "type"

In 1914 the Werkbund organised a large exhibition in Cologne, with Bruno Taut's Glass Pavilion and Walter Gropius's model factory; the war forced it to close early. On that occasion the debate between Muthesius and van de Velde broke out: the former defended standardisation, the definition of "types" suited to mass production, the latter the creative freedom of the artist. It is one of the questions from which modern design was born.

From the Werkbund to the Modern Movement

After the war the Werkbund's ideas flowed into the Bauhaus, founded by Gropius in 1919. From 1922 the Werkbund published the magazine Die Form, and in 1927 it organised the exhibition "Die Wohnung" in Stuttgart: under the direction of Mies van der Rohe, Europe's leading architects, including Le Corbusier and Gropius, built the Weissenhof Estate, a manifesto of the Modern Movement.

The German model was imitated in other countries, with the Austrian Werkbund (1912) and the Swiss one (1913). In 1933 the Nazis took control of the association, which was later dissolved. It was refounded after the Second World War, between 1947 and 1950, and is still active today.