Peter Behrens and his contributions to design

Peter Behrens

Born in Hamburg, Germany in 1869, Peter Behrens studied painting from 1886 to 1889 at the Karlsruhe School of Art, and in 1889 in Dusseldorf under Ferdinand Brutt (Peter pp). He visited the Netherlands in 1890 before finally settling down in Munich (Peter pp). Behrens was a member of the Munich Secession and associated with the contemporary artistic radicals of the day, and in 1897, after visiting Italy the year before, he became one of the founders of the Munich Vereinigte Werkstatten, United Workshops (Peter pp). He formed a close friendship with Otto Eckmann and designed for Pan, and designed cover for Otto Julius Bierbaum's literary magazine, Die Insel, 1899, his Der Brunte Vogel, 1899, and for his Pan im Busch, 1901 (Peter pp). Behrens was invited in 1899 to Darmstadt to join the artists' colony set up by Prince Albert's grandson, Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig II von Hessen (Peter pp).

While in Darmstadt, Behrens built his own house, designing everything from the structure down to the cutlery (Peter pp). He had designed it specifically for the Darmstadt 1901 Exhibition, and in fact, the Haus Peter Behrens was the only building on the Mathildenhohe that had not been designed by Olbrich (Peter pp). The house incorporated both arts and crafts and jugendstil influences in an individualistic way that can be found in his later work (Peter pp). Behrens wrote the preface and designed the ornament for the record of the exhibition that was presented to Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig, Ein Dokument Deutscher Kunst, 1901 (Peter pp).

Trained as a textile and graphic designer, Behrens emerged as one of the leading architects in Germany (Sachsse pp). After spending several years at Mathildenholhe, he was appointed director of the School of Arts and Crafts in Dusseldorf in 1903, where his intent was to set up a photography class headed by Erwin Quedenfeldt, another member of the Deutsche Werkbund and an important figure in the fine art photography movement (Sachsse pp). In 1907, Behrens left Dusseldorf to become chief designer for the company, Allgemeine Elekrizitatsgesellschaft, AEG, in Berlin, which at the time produced large numbers of electrical household articles and was run by Emil Rathenau (Sachsse pp). One of the first decisions Behren made at AEG was to produce a large catalog of the company's manufactured goods, particularly those he had designed, and in contrast to earlier catalogs, this one displayed designs that varied only slightly from one product to the next (Sachsse pp). The photographs used in the catalogs were directly linked to the new AEG logo that was also designed by Behrens, a hexagonal comprised of nothing but the three letters (Sachsse pp). There was no allegory, floral or female figure designed in this logo, it simply consisted of the letters (Sachsse pp). This was in itself a revolution in graphic design and created a corporate identity, thus, AEG became synonymous with the label, Made in Germany (Sachsse pp).

AEG's history spans over 100 years, from the founding of AEG with the purchase of the German license for Edison patents to the first electrical appliances created by Behrens, the father of design (AEG pp). At the beginning of the twentieth century, AEG was the first industrial company that employed a designer, Behrens, and in 1907, he was commissioned not only to design new factories but also appliances (AEG pp).

The turbine hall for the AEG in Berlin-Moabit, 1909, represented the culmination of Behrens efforts to give architectural dignity to a workplace, similar to the achievement of Frank Lloyd Wright with the Larkin Building in Buffalo, New York (A.E.G. pp). Behrens created a plastic effect and a dynamic form of construction of the trusses that were pulled to the outside as well as through the tapering iron trusses and the glass areas that were drawn towards the inside (A.E.G pp). Although many criticized the building, Le Corbusier, however, admired the structure as being a charged center that represents the integral architectonic creations of modern society, with rooms of admirable moderation and cleanness, and magnificent machines that set impressive accents (A.E.G. pp). Behrens industrial work for A.E.G. has received praise from historians of the modern style and industrial design (Peter pp).