Curt Fischer
Curt Fischer was a highly successful tinkerer, engineer and lamp manufacturer. During WWI, he repurposed carriages into mobile radio stations, and also helped develop radio communication for the Zeppelin. After the war and with the industrial revival in Germany with longer work days into the evening, natural day light was no longer sufficient to meet the lighting needs at work spaces. Recognized this need, Fischer invented a movable, adjustable and directional lamp, for which he was awarded a patent in 1919 – the first of about 160 patents and copyrights during his lifetime.
In the same year, he founded the Midgard Lighting Co. Midgard, based on Fischer’s patent, constructed the first of these lamps, which were a true innovation at the beginning of the 20th century.
Also in 1919, the Bauhaus design school (1919 – 33) was founded in Weimar, Germany by Walter Gropius.
It is not surprising that Fischer became supplier to the Bauhaus with his innovative lamps, where Midgard could be found at the desks of director Gropius, professors Marcel Breuer, Lyonel Feininger, Wilhelm Wagenfeld, Marianne Brandt and Gunta Stoelzl as well as in the Bauhaus apartments.
Walter Gropius
Gunta Stoelzl
Thus the success and fame of the Bauhaus and that of Curt Fischer and Midgard are very much intertwined. Lazlo Maholy-Nagy brought his love of Midgard lamps to America, as the director of the New Bauhaus (founded 1937, now the IIT Institute of Design) in Chicago. During WWII, Fischer managed to distance himself from the Nazis and stay out of military production. After the war and after his death in 1956, his company Midgard, located in what had become Eastern Germany, was confiscated and nationalized by the State in 1972. With reunification of the 2 Germanies in 1989, it was reprivatized in and returned to Fischer’s son Wolfgang. After unsuccessful collaborations with Ikea and Manufactum, in 2015 David Einsiedler and Joke Rosch, design entrepreneurs from Hamburg, were able to acquire the rights, old models and tools of Midgard and revive the company.
Rasch & Einsiedler
