The work of designer Karl Clauss Dietel explores the potential of industrial design, which in the GDR period was committed to the ideals of a caring humanist society. Dietel’s key concepts, like ”usage patina“ and ”the open principle,“ have lost none of their significance, and the forms geared to the ”poetic function“ that he developed in a freelance capacity with Lutz Rudolph for Heliradio, Wartburg and Trabant, Simson Suhl, and Robotron are out-standing works of Eastern European modernism that have an enduring appeal.
Karl Clauss Dietel (b. 1934) worked in collaboration with Lutz Rudolph as a freelance designer for private and nationalized companies in the GDR. He received the German Design Award in 2014.
Lutz Rudolph (1936–2011) worked at the Zentralinstitut für Gestaltung in Berlin and was a freelance designer from 1968 to 2000.
