Guenter Hohne's new book, DDR Design, an appreciation of East German design, includes a brief assessment of the Trabant, the much-maligned, boxy, unique little sedan that U2 hijacked as an onstage emblem (an emblem of what, we still don't know) for their "Achtung Baby" tour and a car that designers everywhere seem to either absolutely love or positively loathe. And, in some cases, both.

Hohne (b. 1943 in Zwickau, Saxony, Germany) is a teacher, journalist and curator of design exhibitions who lives and works in Berlin. He graciously allowed us to translate and reprint this slightly edited version of a chapter on the Trabant from DDR Design.

Find out more about Hohne's work and writings here.

Forms pleasing to the eye and the hand were an absolute must in the 1950s, especially in East German industrial design, to the point that aerodynamic, streamlined form was found not only vehicles but even in pencil sharpeners and coffee grinders. A completely understandable fad, when you consider the great longing of consumers and product designers for harmony and suave elegance, even as the hard, coarse reality of daily life, both during and after the war, was stuck all too painfully in their memories.

Just as the Wolfburger Beetle advanced as the symbol of prosperity and leisure in West Germany, the Zwickau compact Trabant P 70 and P 50/ P60 aspired to such greatness on the streets of the GDR. But unlike VW, Opel, and other western car brands, which were entrusted to renowned engineers and designers, the innovations in East German automobile manufacturing came to fruition in anonymous R&D and factory collectives. At best, the leading talents were only known by name among professionals in their own field, and in principal it remained that way until the end of the Socialistic state-run economy.

The Zwickau factory workers attracted both German and international attention with their two-stroke engines--not least because for the first time ever in Germany they used a synthetic thermosetting plastic instead of sheet metal for the car body.

A contribution in the East Berlin design yearbook FORM UND ZWECK (Form and Function) from 1957/58 praised the molded plastic car body for "combining many advantages like corrosion resistance, elastic stability, good repair possibilities, and much more ? The design of the vehicle body corresponds to the completely international direction of economic compact cars without embellishments and architectural extravagance. A further advantage of the molded plastic car body is the possibility of easily taking out the plastic covering in the event of an accident or collision. Function and economy stand in the foreground in the design of this four-person passenger car."

The Trabant P 50, with its pastel-colored or two-toned lacquered body (sometimes accentuated with a chrome-plated trim strip) was especially notable for a particular detail: The door handle, molded from aluminum, was created by a "true designer" from the Weimar Institute for Interior Design, Wolfgang Dryoff (b. 1923), a specialist in door and furniture fittings.

(In the fall of 2006, Dryoff self-deprecatingly related a story about that very detail: "There was only one thing I didn't consider in the beginning: A car doesn't have just one handle on the driver's side. So, after my design was accepted, I later had to submit the counter-piece for the right-hand, passenger door. Embarrassing!")

210,000 Trabant P 50s and P 60s entered the market between 1958 and 1965 (the two-door models were supplemented with luxury and combination versions in the course of those years), with prices averaging 7,500 to 9,500 marks, or roughly $1,800 to $2,400, depending on the design.

In the West, where Trabants were also exported, they could be had for half the price.

--GUENTER HOHNE, translated by Jennifer Stahl

[Read Part 2 of Hohne's Trabant appreciation right here.]