The Deutsche Werkbund was an organisation founded in 1907 in Munich by twelve artists and architects, including Muthesius, Behrens, Hoffmann, Olbrich, Neumann, Van de Velde and Riemerschmid, and twelve craft enterprises – including the Wiener Werkstätte. Hermann Muthesius was its spiritual father. They aimed for an improvement of the arts-and-crafts education and a raising of the quality of utilitarian objects to reach the same level as England and the United States. The Deutsche Werkbund had an open attitude towards the machine. The intention was to forge closer ties between the artists and industry. Also, there was initially no aesthetic direction determined. When Muthesius did formulate an ideal in 1911, two directions arose within the movement. The main founder formulated as an ideal that production should be standardised (Typisierung) and that a product should derive its beauty from its abstract form. Henry Van de Velde, Gropius and Taut argued for the individualism of the artist (Kunstwollen). This conflict, which became known as the ‘Werkbundstreit’, almost led to the dissolution of the association. The great need for utilitarian goods after WWI made Gropius realise that standardisation and industrial production were necessary, and thus this became the direction of the Werkbund. The Jahrbuch of 1913 shows grain silos as ‘harbingers of a coming monumental style’ in an article by Gropius about the development of modern industrial architecture, and that of 1914 shows bridges, locomotives, cars and passenger boats in articles by Gropius and Neumann. The Werkbund was dissolved in 1934. The photos of grain silos, cars, aeroplanes and boats as examples for modern architecture became much more widely known through the articles of Le Corbusier in the magazine l’Esprit Nouveau (1920-21), which were brought together in a book in 1922.
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pages from the 1913 Jahrbuch of the Deutsche Werkbund
pages from l’Esprit Nouveau of Le Corbusier, 1922