The work of designer Karl Clauss Dietel explores the potential of industrial design, which in the GDR period was committed to the ideals of a caring humanist society. Dietel’s key concepts, like ”usage patina“ and ”the open principle,“ have lost none of their significance, and the forms geared to the ”poetic function“ that he developed in a freelance capacity with Lutz Rudolph for Heliradio, Wartburg and Trabant, Simson Suhl, and Robotron are out-standing works of Eastern European modernism that have an enduring appeal.