JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
My experience with technical and industrial product catalogs (1900-1950) is that they have the potential for superlative or at least challenging design. Such is the case for the following catalogs issued by Mannesmann Export of Dusseldorf. The designs are unexpected, sharp, colorful, heavy, and anything but the spareness of its product. The catalogs below were all issued in the 1950's.
Mannesmann was an enormous metal concern, with 137,000 employees and revenues of 24 billion in 1999, the year it was acquired in a hostile takeover by Vodefone.
Mannesmann does have a wartime history, including theft of Jewish properties via "Aryanization" as well as other industries and properties coming with conquest. The general director from 1934-1945 was Wilhelm Zangen (1891-1971), a Nazi activist from 19271, and a member of the S.S., and who was a leading industrialist in Germany with numerous high-ranking positions in the Nazi government2, and who was arrested in July 1945 and detained for four months for his role in using slave labor at the works and for arming the German army. Soon afterwards he was restored to a high position at Mannesmann--one of several very senior positions within that corporation that he would hold until 1966.
Notes
1. See the restricted report on Zangen (1944) http://library2.lawschool.cornell.edu/donovan/pdf/Batch_8/Vol_XVII_53_106.pdf
2. See Who''s Who in Nazi Germany, by Robert S. Wistrich, here.
3. Also see S. Jonathan Wiesen, West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past, 1945-1955, UNC Press Books, 2004, p. 28. (An excellent, informative, and informed work.)
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