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A treasure from GDR times: World-famous and forgotten inventions tracked down

The Thuringia State Patent Centre in Ilmenau has digitized and catalogued around 20,000 design patents from the GDR era. The majority of the applications are from Saxony.

Reading time: 5 Minutes

Man sieht einen Rekorder.
The legendary wooden star recorder is one of around 20,000 industrial shapes that were registered as designs in the GDR between 1952 and 1990. © dpa/Stephan Schulz

By Michael Rothe

It is a woman's leg that lures the reporter onto the trail. The black and white photo shows the severed body part with a dark stocking and a garter with a flower on top. Dresden master confectioner Gerhard Röder remembers this case well from the late 1960s - and the perpetrator: Gerhard Metasch, a professional colleague of the current pensioner.

The leg caused quite a stir at the time, he says. The event is documented on 11 March 1969: not at the criminal investigation department, but at the Berlin Patent Office and digitized for posterity by Paton, the state patent center of Thuringia in Ilmenau. Not a crime, but a sweet sin.

Two fingers thick and weighing 100 grams, this piece of marzipan with a partial chocolate coating is one of around 20,000 industrial shapes that were registered as designs in East Germany between 1952 and 1990. The term refers not only to edibles, but also to vehicles, furniture, machines, decorative objects and much more. The majority of the authors came from Saxony, with a good 1,337 entries relating to Dresden alone. 946 applicants are from Leipzig and 1,157 from Karl-Marx-Stadt, which is now called Chemnitz again.

The GDR was a country poor in raw materials. Its most important asset: brains. Christoph Hoock, head of the Technical University (TU) Paton, his colleague Sabine Milde and a handful of helpers have unearthed this treasure - a treasure trove of forms - and digitized it, making it electronically searchable. Their three years of research and hard work in the Leibniz Building of the TU were funded by the German Research Foundation with 320,000 euros.

GDR design heritage bigger than MZ, Erika and Sternrekorder

The legendary RG 25 and 28 kitchen appliances and the mopeds from Suhl are well known to GDR citizens. The Erika typewriter from the Robotron combine based in Dresden and the robust Mitropa crockery from the Colditz porcelain factory are also well known. However, the design heritage of the East is much greater - but has so far only been available on paper in two collections: 14,727 entries in the trademark and design gazette of the GDR and on thousands of index cards at the Berlin branch of the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA).searching for a needle in a haystack.

Christoph Hoock, Sabine Milde and their team have collected and digitized the GDR's treasure trove of moulds © Martin/TU Ilmenau


"A design is protected as a registered design if it is new and has individual character." This is stated in the Design Act. According to this, industrial designs from the defunct workers' and peasants' state must be taken into account, but - unlike already digitized patents and trademarks - they were not included in the DPMA register and the databases fed by it.

"That must have been forgotten for 30 years," says Sabine Milde laconically. A lot of paper had to be searched through in several places to check a novelty or individual form - without today's common online search systems for titles, names of companies and authors. Research was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

"A patent describes new technologies, is usually embedded in the object and is not visible from the outside. With design, it's the other way around," says Christoph Hoock, describing the difference. And design patents could be protected then as now, says the Paton boss, who holds a doctorate. According to the protagonists, preparing them was "a challenge" - an understatement. There were cardboard cards with cut-outs glued on, fabric and carpet samples and baby bibs. Notebooks were yellowed, index cards had water stains and faded writing. Spelling mistakes and unclean printing made things even more difficult. And it was only possible to merge the records from 1964 to 1984. Nevertheless, the entries could be enriched by 13,000 images and textiles. For a publicly accessible online search system, bibliographic data from the trademark and pattern sheets was linked to image data from the index cards.

There are also surprising and bizarre things

This GDR legacy - including surprising and bizarre items - can now be used for research and design research, but also by interested citizens. The entries range from a "lace curtain" from VEB Plauener Spitze to waste containers for Reichsbahn wagons from Waggonbau Bautzen and mustard cups from there to a bungalow-like series of homes with the names Lilienstein, Pirna, Hohnstein, Pulsnitz from the Betonleichtbaukombinat Dresden.

Die Schreibmaschine Erika 50/60 gehört neben zahlreichenFahrzeugen zu Clauss Dietels Schöpfungen. Der2022 verstorbene Designer hat 36 Einträge.
The Erika 50/60 typewriter is one of Clauss Dietel's creations, along with numerous vehicles. The designer, who died in 2022, has 36 entries.

The "hot panties" from Willy Frömmel KG. Radeberg and a bottle opener from Robotron-Buchungsmaschinenwerk Karl-Marx-Stadt. "Rechner wissen, wer bezahlt" ("Computers know who pays") is written on the stylized little man - and he points mischievously to the side. There is the special sports shoe for wrestlers from Vereinigte Schuhfabriken Meißen and tie ribbons from Helmut Haucke KG Großröhrsdorf - but also ceramics, porcelain and shoes from there. Cutlery from Riesa and hydro pots from Kamenz are also represented, as are furniture handles and fittings from Döbeln, the Beirette tube camera from Freital, trap pencils, fiber pens and ballpoint pens as well as combine harvesters from Singwitz.

It often took years before production began, and some products never made it onto the market, such as the "double-decker coach with reversible train control compartment" from Waggonbau Görlitz in 1989. "But the registration secured the chance of monopoly rights," says Sabine Milde. And the companies were paid up to 50,000 GDR marks for such samples.

Jochen Ziska from Bennewitz involved in 137 projects

There are many repeat offenders among the authors. First and foremost: Jochen Ziska. The designer from Bennewitz has been involved in 137 projects - from hedge trimmers to vehicles for the disabled. His best-known piece: the star recorder, also known as the "wooden star". Karl Clauss Dietel from Chemnitz appears in 55 entries. He is named, for example, for the Simson mopeds "Star" and "S 50" as well as for Erika typewriters. The last application dates from May 14, 1990, and even though the term of protection of the designs has long since expired and there is no risk of infringement by third parties, they are still part of the "design treasure trove" and play an important role in the assessment of future designs, says patent consultant Milde. They could also be included in design invalidity proceedings.

The work of Hoock & Co has been praised from the highest level. Veronica Biermann, Professor of Design and Architectural History, calls it an "impressive research achievement" - and "a huge gift" for Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle. The former university for industrial design is closely linked to the industrial and everyday cultural design and economic history of the GDR, says the Vice Rector.

The Paton opens "a digital window through which we can not only look into a richly documented past, but also bring the achievements back into the present," says art historian Biermann: to examine and weigh up its own historical significance - for example in comparison to the Ulm School of Design in the FRG, as well as to examine and weigh up the different design skills of the teachers and students who once taught there - "whether what is considered 'new' today was not already thought and done in the GDR long ago".

The project and its creators

  • The inventory of designs from the GDR era was to be made accessible for research, interested members of the public and effective research.
  • Paper inventories at Paton were linked to the corresponding index cards at the German Patent and Trade Mark Office and processed electronically.
  • Notebooks, index cards, photos and fabric samples were optically scanned and digitized.
  • Paton has been involved in computer-aided technical and patent information in teaching, research and practice since 1996.
  • In Saxony, the centers are located at TU Dresden, Chemnitz and AGIL GmbH Leipzig. (SZ/mr)

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