{"id":289915,"date":"2026-02-18T12:22:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T12:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/289915\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T12:22:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T12:22:19","slug":"good-20th-century-industrial-design-this-west-german-perpetual-calendar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/289915\/","title":{"rendered":"Good 20th Century\u00a0Industrial Design: This West German Perpetual Calendar"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n
\n
\n
\n <\/p>\n

Here’s something that was designed around the 1960s or ’70s, yet would probably sell well today. This perpetual calendar is by Berendsohn, a company that made a fortune designing promotional objects in 20th-century West Germany. (More on that in a moment.)<\/p>\n

Image: Wertwerk<\/a> <\/p>\n

Image: Wertwerk<\/a> <\/p>\n

The calendar’s design is interactive. It consists of several dozen white plastic cylinders, as well as one red and one yellow cylinder. Each day the user removes a cylinder from the relevant column, allowing the red cylinder to mark the date. Once a month, they do the same with the ‘month’ column.<\/p>\n

(If you’re wondering why the cylinders briefly appear to defy gravity in the video above, that’s because in that shot, the unit is placed flat on a table.)<\/p>\n

The branding you see on the bottom of the unit isn’t for the manufacturer, but the client; Retter Zahn-Technik was a dentist’s office.<\/p>\n

Image: Wertwerk<\/a> <\/p>\n

Which leads us to Berendsohn’s deal: As West Germany’s economy took off in the 1950s, company boss G\u00fcnther Berendsohn\u2014a Holocaust survivor\u2014spotted an opportunity. As the economy prospered, the country had become crowded with advertising. Berendsohn recognized that a better way for companies to cut through the signal noise, was to give away well-designed promotional objects with the client’s branding on them.<\/p>\n

Image: Wertwerk<\/a> <\/p>\n

Berendsohn shrewdly targeted useful objects that people would interact with daily: Calendars, coffee mugs, key racks, fountain pens, salt-and-pepper shakers. By manufacturing durable, long-lasting items with unique designs, the company prospered, reaching around 100 million Deutsche Marks (USD $55 million) in sales by the 1980s.<\/p>\n

Image: Wertwerk<\/a> <\/p>\n

The company still exists today<\/a>, though sadly, the calendars are gone. <\/p>\n


\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here’s something that was designed around the 1960s or ’70s, yet would probably…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-289915","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}