A history of design by Siegfried Gronert
Published in 1991 by: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne

During the first planning sessions for our book "Modern Door Handles", Otl Aicher had asked the FSB team to forget the FSB brand for a little while, to open their hearts and minds and to focus exclusively on the subject itself, the great international world of door handles.

The preparations took two years. First, we contacted our competitors, asking them to supply some material. With very few exceptions, they agreed to cooperate. Then the search for further traces of design in museums and libraries, at trade fairs and exhibitions began.

Finally, the art historian Dr. Siegfried Gronert set to work writing the monograph about modern door handles which was simultaneously his postdoctoral thesis to qualify for the chair of design theory at the University of Weimar.

FSB’s appearance in this book borders on self-denial. We allowed our company to be mentioned as part of the history of modern door handles just as little as Alfred Hitchcock ever appeared in his movies, that is, only marginally, in the chapter about "German vision” (Deutsche Phantastik)". As a consequence, the designer group “Kunstflieger (Stunt Pilots)” organised an exhibition later on under the heading "Wo der Mensch das Haus berührt (Where Human Beings Touch the House)" on the basis of this book. Each design chapter was represented by one or several cabinets with closed doors. Visitors were encouraged to open these doors with the original handles from the relevant epochs, and thus to experience a concentrated version of the relevant epoch’s history.

Some time later, our generous deed was rewarded a second time: in response to the chapter about Max Bill’s famous “Ulm door handle”, which is reproduced here as an example, the Max Bill Foundation in Switzerland commissioned FSB to produce a re-edition of the original design in 2001.