Walter Paepcke

Walter Paepcke (1896–1960) was a U.S. industrialist and philanthropist prominent in the middle-20th century.

A longtime executive of the Chicago-based Container Corporation of America, Paepcke is best noted for his founding of the Aspen Institute and the Aspen Skiing Company in the early 1950s, both of which helped transform the town of Aspen, Colorado into an international resort destination and popularize the sport of skiing in the United States.

In 1949 Paepcke made Aspen the site for a celebration of the 200th birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Albert Schweitzer, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Thornton Wilder, and Artur Rubinstein all attended the celebration. The next year, Paepcke created what is now the Aspen Institute.

Paepcke hired Bauhaus designer Herbert Bayer and brought him to Aspen to promote the project through poster design and other design work; Paepcke was also the patron of fellow Bauhaus figure László Moholy-Nagy by financing the re-birth of the American New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1939.The New Bauhaus also had links to the Armour Institute of Technology.

His wife, Elizabeth "Pussy" Paepcke, was the sister of American diplomatic figure Paul Nitze.

In the 1930s Walter Paepcke was a leader in design. He believed that design had a practical value, and that anything from adverts, packaging, and trucks, to the company's factories could promote a business if a trademark was used. As with World War I, graphic design was used for propaganda during World War II; mainly with posters.