Ferdinand Kramer

Ferdinand Kramer (January 22 1898, Frankfurt, Germany– November 4 1985, Frankfurt) was an important German architect and functionalist designer.

Kramer's father was owner of the most well-known of Frankfurt hat shops. In 1916, immediately after conclusion of school, Kramer was drawn in to military service and remained a soldier through the end of the First World War. The following year he trained at the Bauhaus for a few months before quitting, disillusioned with the technical level of the training, then began a three-year architectural study in Munich with Theodor Fischer. Kramer returned to Frankfurt in 1922. With the lack of architectural commissions during this period of inflation, he concentrated on furniture designs for Thonet and metal utensils, for example his "Kramer Oven", a sheet-metal furnace.

From 1925 through 1930 Kramer worked for architect and civic planner Ernst May building and furnishing the housing projects of New Frankfurt, and was a contributor to the second CIAM conference. After disputes with the Nazi regime and professional disqualification, Kramer emigrated to the United States in 1938 and worked on a variety of projects, including work with Norman bel Geddes on designs for the New York World's Fair of 1939, designs for inexpensive "knock-down" furniture which anticipate today's commercial "flat-pack" furniture, and commissions from his friend Theodor Adorno for the Institute for Social Research during its New York years. Kramer became a naturalized US citizen in 1945.

On his return to Germany in 1947, Kramer taught and served as the director of building at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main until his retirement into private practice in 1964. He was married to Beate Kramer and later to Lore Kramer, who still cares for his legacy.

The university moves step by step to the new Poelzig/Westend and Nieder-Eschbach campuses, so many of the old buildings in Bockenheim will be sold or even torn down.

The heritage

From 9 December 1982 to 23 January 1983 a retrospective of Kramer's work was shown at Bauhaus archive in Berlin. The Frankfurt university keeps samples of furniture designed special for their purposes (as part of their heritage) in the archives. A few other museums like the Design collection in Wuppertal or the Thonet Museum and the Vitra Museum have several older pieces of Kramer furnitures. Some products designed by Kramer are re-issued, like the doorhandle (by ironmonger) and possibly a few furniture in the future (by leise-leise).

* [http://www.mastersofmodernism.com/?page=Hardware&item=3]