GDR DESIGN

A good overview of East German design is offered here .

"During the initial phase of the GDR, product design was dominated by an official Stalinist aesthetic, but the ideology of Stalinism proved terribly unsuited for the postwar world. It relegated the needs of consumers to dead last on the priority list, demanding sacrifice in all areas of life in the interest of building heavy industry based only on primary and secondary production. clothes, toys, household items, and cars were all considered by the SED party to be wants, not needs.

The regime had been against modernism, it favored historicism in product design, and thus was initially against the use of plastic because of its modern aesthetic. the products of socialist industry and construction should reflect the cultural heritage of
germany, imitating styles such as baroque, rococo, chippendale, ‘gründerzeit’, and others...."



"When the population exerted pressure on the party to abandon its anti-formalist stance and adopt a version of practical functionalism in design, the SED had to back off its anti-bauhaus line. ‘national in form, socialist in content’ was then the official party slogan for how to produce goods. plastics came to symbolize the practical, and valuable rather than the cheap and disposable. It was largely because of this that plastics came to be seen in the GDR by the majority of the population as a quality material and a sign of technological progress, not a cheap imitation.
there was a general acceptance and even pride in the clever use of it to make socialism work even when resources were tight."

See, also, this rather cheeky article from the Guardian about cold war design: "The West Germans coped with increasing prosperity by applying Bauhaus design principles to consumer goods: Dieter Rams's austerity for Braun electrical products would only have been acceptable in a culture where alternatives were becoming available. Meanwhile, the Ossis (East Germans) had trouble making enamel buckets. Soviet-sector product design was charmingly bad. The Soyuzelektropribor television receiver had wobbly legs and loose knobs. That's if you could receive television."