Röhm & Haas experienced not only an economic boom but also a tremendous improvement in its image, both in Germany and at the international level. Acrylic won the Grand Prix and the Gold Medal at the 1937 International Exposition in Paris (Röhm & Haas 1938, 28 and Wittig 2007, 42). The prizes were awarded in recognition not of the military use made of the material but of its aesthetic potential (Röhm & Haas 1938, 3: “Clear as crystal”) and thus of its suitability as a material for the sophisticated and spectacular design of everyday objects, also known as ‘arts and crafts’:
- Furniture design: garden chairs with a stylishly shaped green acrylic seat created by the two French architects Jean Prouvé (1901-1984) and Jacques André (1904-1985) (see Buchholz 2007, 22, 26 and 38-39) caused a sensation at the International Exposition in Paris. Two years later, Grosfeld House exhibited its “Glassic” furniture collection, which had been commissioned from the US designer Lorin Jackson (1908-1987), at the New York World’s Fair (Buchholz 2007, 19). Its stools, coffee table or chairs with an acrylic back are popular design classics nowadays. The material was supplied by the US offshoot of Röhm & Haas in Philadelphia, which had been established in 1909, was known in the meantime as Rohm and Haas Company, Inc. and was managed by Otto Röhm’s partner Otto Haas (1872-1960) on his own. The story behind this:
“The US government seized Otto Röhm’s interest in the American subsidiary without compensation in 1917 (during the war, editor’s note). Otto Haas was allowed to keep his interest, because he had in the meantime become an American citizen. He subsequently established the independent Rohm and Haas Company and personally made sure that Otto Röhm enjoyed a generous share of the profits for years. So the German subsidiary in the USA became an independent American company. At the same time, Otto Haas remained co-owner of Röhm & Haas OHG, the company in Darmstadt, Germany. The two companies continued to co-operate very closely for many years to their mutual benefit.” (Wittig 2007, 17)
The politics of the Nazi regime in Germany and the Second World War then forced the two companies apart completely:
“Progress in plastics research in Darmstadt was attributable not only to Otto Röhm personally but also – to a lesser extent – to Rohm and Haas Company in Philadelphia. For this reason as well as due to the 1927 contract about mutual co-operation, Philadelphia was granted the rights to use all monomer and polymer acrylate and methacrylate processes and the products manufactured by them in 1934/35 in return for the payment of royalties. Legal restrictions introduced particularly by the German Ministry of Aviation meant, however, that Röhm & Haas was unable to provide the necessary information to its American partners from the end of 1937 onwards. The contacts ended completely when the Second World War began.” (Wittig 2007, 42)
- Fashion design: women’s handbags made out of celluloid with an acrylic cover were all the rage in the USA in the 1940s and “had […] a similarly magical appeal to glass slippers in fairy tales”. (Buchholz 2007, 19 and 34-35)
- Jewellery design: Röhm & Haas 1938, 8 advertised its product for “such jewellery and fashionable accessoires as bracelets, necklaces, brooches, buckles and clasps, rings, buttons and fantasy figures”, because “acrylic sparkles like precious stones where it is polished”. Buchholz 2007, 19 claims in this context that the new plastic has a “magical aura”. The low thermal conductivity of acrylic contributed to its popularity, because the material felt less cold on the skin than metal or conventional glass (Röhm & Haas 1938, 9).
- Musical instrument production: in the summer of 1936, a “glass violin” caused a particular stir at the “Germany” exhibition in Berlin that has already been mentioned (Trommsdorff 1976, 239). Otto Röhm himself had come up with the idea of making musical instruments out of acrylic and even held a patent as inventor from 28. April 1935 onwards (DRP 649388). The explanation given under the heading “Musical instrument made entirely or partly out of synthetic resin”:
“A technically viable solution to the problem of manufacturing musical instruments out of synthetic resins has not been found with the general proposal of using plastic substances or synthetic resins and with a list of a number of desirable properties. The inventor has now determined that the thousands of known synthetic resins include a small group, i.e. polymethacrylic acid methyl ester, polymethacrylic acid ethyl ester and blends or copolymers of both, that combine all the good properties that are needed to build the bodies of musical instruments and do not have other troublesome properties and side effects. […] The invention enables wind instruments like flutes, string instruments like violins and other instruments like zithers to be produced. All instruments produced in accordance with the invention have impressive sound quality, are to all practical purposes unbreakable, do not change even in humid conditions, are suitable for tropical climates and have other valuable properties.”
Trommsdorff 1976, 239 qualifies this description: “Due to acrylic’s relatively low modulus of elasticity, the string instruments were only suitable for chamber music […]. The sound produced by flutes and clarinets made out of it was, however, definitely the equivalent of those made from wood or metal, so they were used by military bands too.” The long-established company Mönnig in Markneukirchen/Vogtland developed a complete set of acrylic wind instruments (Buchholz 2007, 18). “Röhm & Haas finally presented the use of PMMA in instrument production with resounding success at the 1937 International Exposition in Paris.” (Buchholz 2007, 18) And when Otto Röhm needed to be in Berlin in the years before the Second World War started, he liked to stay at the Eden Hotel near the zoo, because an acrylic string quartet – featuring two violins, a viola and a cello – played on the roof garden there (Edschmid 1957, 63, Trommsdorff 1976, 239 and Buchholz 2007, 18).
- Glass art and sculpture: like ivory, acrylic could be used “as a material for carving art and craft objects” (Trommsdorff 1976, 238; see also Trommsdorff 1937, 10). It could be etched too: “Ornaments and figures are cut into the acrylic with a rotating milling tool.” (Röhm & Haas 1938, 19) In order to encourage artistic development, Otto Röhm set up a special studio at the company in 1937 that was called “New Darmstadt Glass Art” (Trommsdorff 1976, 238) and was meant to be a productive source of impressive creations. Attention should be drawn to the following acrylic artists: the Darmstadt painter Meta Deutsch (1891-1989), the Darmstadt painter and sculptor Walter Cauer (1905-1995) and the Swiss painter Ernst Georg Haller (1902-1980), who – for example – welded colourful acrylic panels together to make church windows (Trommsdorff 1976, 238). The response to Deutsch’ acrylic etchings – flowers, animals, portraits, symbols – was particularly good, but the “New Darmstadt Glass Art” was not an economic success (Trommsdorff 1976, 239). Incidentally: the company boss himself posed as a model for an acrylic sculpture. O. E. Weber created a lifesize sculpture of Röhm’s head from a block of coloured PMMA, although the Nazis had forbidden him to work as an artist, because he had a Jewish grandfather … Otto Röhm deliberately defied this ban by commissioning Weber (Trommsdorff 1976, 239).
- Car manufacturing: as a substitute for glass, acrylic provided unparalleled “freedom to design aerodynamically streamlined structures” as well as “cylindrically or spherically shaped windows” (Röhm & Haas 1938, 16). Most of them were limited in practice to luxury limousines or special models like the world record cars produced by Mercedes-Benz and Auto-Union (Röhm & Haas, 1938, 13), which are on show nowadays as design highlights in museums. What were also found impressive were acrylic body parts like roofs, bonnets or boots that made the inside of the car visible, as was the case with the Opel Olympia that was on show at the International Motor Car and Motor Cycle Exhibition in Berlin from 20. February to 7. March 1937: “Car enthusiasts were as a result supposed to be able to examine the new self-supporting body closely. Because it was normal at this time for cars to consist of a stable chassis with a frame to which the body was attached. In the Opel Olympia, on the other hand, the basic body structure and the frame of the chassis were combined to form a truss-like, self-supporting steel structure.” (Vaupel 2011, 28) The highlight: “The engine – hitherto a black box – was to some extent opened and made transparent with the help of acrylic.” (Vaupel 2011, 29) For the International Motor Car and Motor Cycle Exhibition from 18. February to 6. March 1938 in Berlin, Bauer & Schaurte Schraubenfabrik from Neuss had a lifesize “crystalline” Opel Olympia engine made, “to demonstrate how many steel bolts were normally used in an engine at the time. The company located by the River Rhine wanted to draw attention to a new bolt it had developed, that was very much lighter than its predecessors. The aim of making the acrylic engine transparent was to show how much weight was saved by using the new bolts – about 26 kilograms!”. (Vaupel 2011, 29)
Transparency also meant an unobstructed “insight into operations” (Röhm & Haas 1938, 7), which had previously taken place invisibly, and into mechanisms that could now be watched (Röhm & Haas 1938, 22). The “crystal engine” from Bauer & Schaurte did at any rate work; “It was possible to observe the pistons, valves and gearwheels through the acrylic.” (Vaupel 2011, 29) A second “glass engine”, i.e. the engine from the new Wanderer W 23 from Auto Union AG in Chemnitz, revealed the ignition sequence of a four-cylinder, four-stroke petrol engine at the exhibition in Berlin: “Thanks to lamps in different colours, visitors were able to watch the suction, compression and ignition of the petrol, the subsequent release of exhaust gas, the path taken by cooling water as well as how a clutch works.” (Vaupel 2011, 29) It goes without saying that the Nazis took advantage of this to present themselves as the driving force behind progress: Hitler had himself photographed in front of the “glass” engines when he visited the car exhibition. (Vaupel 2011, 28-29)
The showpieces made out of acrylic that were appropriate for teaching or advertising purposes at this time naturally did not relate to cars alone; they also included a typewriter with a see-through housing or a transparent kettle, in which it was possible to see the heating coils in the base (Vaupel 2011, 27 and 29). Everything was taken to an ideological extreme at the huge propaganda exhibitions that the Nazi regime organised to celebrate the creative powers of the people, state and business community: an etched acrylic globe was on show and could not be overlooked in the Henkel pavilion at the national exhibition “Creative People” that was held in Düsseldorf from May to October 1937 and attracted more than six million visitors (Röhm & Haas 1938, 25). And at the hygiene exhibition “Healthy Living – Keep Up The Good Work” that was held in Berlin from 24. September to 6. November 1938, the transparent models communicated the message “that every living organ, every technical component, every department of a company and every substructure of a complex government body has a precisely defined function and that tremendous achievements are only possible with carefully arranged interaction between all the individual parts.” (Vaupel 2011, 31)