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Karteikarte von Thonet Mundus für das Modell A 811, Entwurf Josef 
Hoffmann, 1 930 Thonet Mundus index card for the A 811 model, design 
Josef Hoffmann, 1930 
construction. A further development of the rieh vocabulary of the classic 
bentwood chairs had been put to an end not only for work-related reasons, 
but in the polarization of tradition and avant-garde thinking, the Thonet 
style’ had come to an end.” 22 
The new functionalist building, which had become established in the 
1920s as the so-called International Style 23 , also brought about major 
changes in interior design: Modern tubulär steel furniture, first developed 
by Marcel Breuer at the Bauhaus in 1925, seemed particularly suitable 
forfurnishing appropriate interiors. After the Bauhaus moved to Dessau, 
Breuer was able to use the workshops of the aircraft manufacturer Junkers 
as a technological laboratory for a short time. Here, the young architect 
was able to experiment with the new material and develop some of the 
prototypes that were to dominate the furniture style of the late 1920s 
and early 1930s. 24 In the production of tubulär steel furniture, an attempt 
was made to keep the diameter and bending radii of the steel tubes as 
low as possible. The most satisfying results were achieved with the se- 
amless tubulär steel from Mannesmann, and impressive constructions 
were formed from long continuous pieces of pipe that could be assembled 
using special plyers. In order not to break the elegance of the lines, the 
early tubulär steel chairs were mainly covered with “eisengarn” an espe- 
cially strong and usually colorful cotton fabric. Initially the tubulär steel 
itself was nickel-plated and it was only later that it was predominantly 
chrome-plated. As garden furniture, however, the tubulär steel furniture 
was also “delivered, without a surcharge, nitrocellulose-painted in all 
colors of the fabric covering”-the fabric covering was “available in the 
following colors: grey, rust-brown, orange, red, green, blue, black, and 
yellow.” 25 
In 1926/27 Breuer and his fellow Hungarian Kaiman Lengyel founded a 
Company called Standard Möbel in Berlin, which was joined a year later 
by Anton Lorenz-also a Hungarian. Lorenz became the managing director 
of the Company which had been established to market Breuer’s designs 
and which was sold to Thonet in 1929 at a huge profit. The tubulär steel 
furniture Company Desta, which was founded by Lorenz immediately after 
this sale, was also taken over by Thonet in the early 1930s. Due to the 
complicated, constantly changing production authorizations and licensing 
at that time, it is now not always easy to identify the manufacturer of a 
specific piece of furniture, even if the model and the designer are clearly 
known. After several court-held disputes over Copyright and production 
rights, Lorenz himself eventually became a well-paid employee of Thonet. 26 
So, it was not the Thonet Mundus Group that initiated the production of 
the new tubulär Steel furniture. Nevertheless, with his energetic and skillful 
business strategy the chairman of the holding Company, Leopold Pilzer, 
managed to lead the Company to the undisputed top of this growing 
industry until the 1930s. Thonet Mundus had already started producing 
its own tubulär steel furniture at the Thonet Freres factory in Paris, where 
Bruno Weill, the son of Rudolf Weill, one of the founding members of 
Mundus, worked. As a talented young designer in Paris, Bruno Weill pro- 
duced some convincing models underthe pseudonym Bewe. Only after 
22 Karl Mang, Thonet Bugholzmöbel. Von der handwerklichen Fertigung zur industriellen Produktion, 
Vienna 1982, 123f. 
23 Cf. Walter Gropius, International Architecture (1925), Zürich 2019, as well as Walter Curt Behrendt, 
The Victory of the New Building Style (1927), Los Angeles 2000. 
24 Cf. Walter Scheiffele, Bauhaus, Junkers, Sozialdemokratie: ein Kraftfeld der Moderne, Berlin 2003, 
as well as Helmut Erfurth, Junkers, das Bauhaus und die Moderne, Dessau-Roßlau 2010. 
25 The Information comes from the price list from Gebrüder Thonet Frankenberg 1934. Here the first 
indication of chrome plating also appears: “Our furniture [...] is copper-plated, then nickel-plated and 
finally chrome-plated. According to the current state of the art, chrome plating offers the best 
possible protection against rust and is therefore definitely preferable to ordinary nickel plating.” 
26 In the end Lorenz proved to be a skilled businessman by winning the patent rights for the so-called 
Kragstuhl-\he cantilever tubulär steel chair without rear legs, which dates back to an artistic design 
by the Dutch architect Mart Stam. Cf. Otakar Mäcel, Der Freischwinger. Vom Avantgardeentwurf zur 
Ware (Dissertation.), Delft 1992. 
59