ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that German Democratic Republic (GDR) designers faced significant and sustained opposition to their vision of socialist design, which explains why they did not explicitly identify their practice as functionalist or acknowledge its historical roots in Modernist practice until the mid 1970s. In the immediate post-war period the GDR officially adopted the Soviet doctrine of Socialist Realism to guide its efforts to promote the establishment of a new socialist culture. The gravity of the opposition was felt in the period of the Formalism Debate, which saw a fierce and concerted campaign against functionalist design conducted by party ideologues with the help of newspaper articles, public exhibitions, and interventions in educational institutions. Denunciations of functionalist design became less intransigent, personal and habitual. The idea that GDR designers asserted themselves against continued cultural – political opposition is further supported by a renewed intensification of the same conflict in the early 1960s.
