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Günter Höhne
Günter Höhne, Photo: Günter Höhne

In terms of design history, the products of GDR design still receive too little attention and appreciation. Beyond the Trabi and Robotron, the history and quality of the products are often enough ignored in the West. Competent experts like Günter Höhne are needed to counteract this forgetting. Born in Zwickau, he celebrates his eightieth birthday on April 18. For many years, Höhne has been working energetically to preserve the legacies of GDR design. Together with his wife, the cultural scientist Claudia Höhne, the specialist journalist has built up a private collection of original testimonies to the history of GDR design, comprising thousands of objects, since 1995. What seemed historically relevant was documented photographically and, if they could be researched, supplemented with information about their origin and history. (The results of the research can be read in excerpts on the website Industrieform DDR).

Günter Höhne came to design by a tortuous path. After studying education, he first worked as a teacher and school principal until 1968, then as a radio journalist. After studying journalism at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig, he became literary editor of the cultural-political weekly newspaper “Sonntag” in the late 1970s. In the mid-1980s, State Secretary Kelm then brought him to the Office for Industrial Design, where he was editor-in-chief of the design journal “form+zweck” from 1984 to 1989. After the end of the GDR, Höhne was head of department at the daily newspaper “Neue Zeit” until it was discontinued in 1995. He then worked as a freelance design journalist (he wrote for designreport, among other publications) – and collector of GDR design and estates of GDR designers.

Over the years, the numerous products, designs and documents from the Höhnes’ collection have repeatedly formed the basis for numerous publications, lectures, exhibitions and participations in exhibitions at home and abroad. In the meantime, the rich holdings have been transferred to the Grassi Museum of Applied Art in Leipzig and the Neue Sammlung in Munich, where they will be made publicly accessible to future generations of interested people. Further objects came as donations, permanent loans or through purchases to a number of museums that preserve the cultural heritage of the GDR. In 1993, Günter Höhne was awarded the “Bremer Preis für Designpublizistik” (Bremen Prize for Design Journalism), which was presented for the first time nationwide, and in 2007 he was awarded the honorary Lilienthal Design Prize of the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern for his life’s work in design journalism. Höhne’s new publication “Hinterlassenschaft”, a collection of his texts written between 1977 and 2022, will soon be released.


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