A conversation with director Peter Schubert
On how the HfG Ulm shaped his life

Studying at the HfG and the Ulm Film Institute was the most formative time of my life. The HfG provided not just training, but true education. The faculty represented part of Germany’s intellectual elite—yet a “free spirit” prevailed up on the Kuhberg in Ulm.

Otl Aicher founded the HfG together with his wife Inge Aicher-Scholl and Max Bill, with the conviction that even the design of everyday objects could help overcome the legacy of the Nazi dictatorship and contribute to the development of a new, critical, democratic society.

This aligned perfectly with the ideas of the “Oberhausen film rebels,” who had declared in their 1960 manifesto: “Papa’s cinema is dead!” They were our teachers.

To this day, I’m still a member of club off ulm, the association of former students and faculty.

club off ulm is dedicated to exploring and preserving the cultural significance of the Ulm School of Design. To that end, we publish the series Rückblicke ("Looking Back"), in which former students reflect on their time at the HfG.

The Ulm School had the highest proportion of international students of any university in Germany at the time—and that naturally shaped the atmosphere of daily life. What’s remarkable is that, even today—many decades after our studies—we still share a common mindset.

Anyone who attended the HfG either left very quickly—or remained connected to it for life.

I grew up in Ulm and first got to know the HfG through its carnival parties. They were both famous and infamous—there was live jazz, which was something extraordinary at the time, and male and female students were allowed to live together on campus.

After finishing secondary school and completing an apprenticeship in the advertising department of a large department store in Ulm, I wanted to escape the Nierentisch era with its gold-rimmed aesthetic. In 1961, I began studying graphic design and photography in the HfG’s Department of Visual Communication.

A year later, Alexander Kluge, Edgar Reitz, and some of the Oberhausen film rebels founded the film department at the HfG. These young German filmmakers were rebelling against the so-called kitsch cartel of old-school Ufa directors, who dominated the post-war German cinema scene with apolitical, sentimental films like The Fisherwoman from Lake Constance or The Forester of the Silver Forest.

The young filmmakers called for both formal and thematic experimentation—and demanded that German film confront recent history and the political present. That aligned closely with the goals Otl Aicher had envisioned for the HfG.

By switching to the film department, I also managed to escape the ideological disputes that were going on among different faculty factions at the time.

Our schedule alternated between one week of practical training and one week of theoretical instruction—with lectures shared by students from all departments. These included introductions to ergonomics, perception theory, semiotics, sociology, philosophy, as well as literary studies, mathematics, and methodology. As film students, we could supplement these general education courses with lectures in film history and literature. Practically speaking, we started with what were called “miniatures”—short films between one and three minutes in length.

Later, we moved on to five-, ten-, and fifteen-minute films, which allowed us to experiment with different narrative forms. We still worked in 35mm cinema film format, using heavy camera and sound equipment, and edited our films at the cutting table. It wasn’t until the end of our studies that the 16mm format emerged, which finally enabled a lighter, more documentary style of filmmaking. All of the edition disegno films were shot in this format—but of course, still analog.

Our training wasn’t focused on specific genres, but we mostly worked in a documentary style—even in our earliest film experiments, we were already engaging with recent German history. I was born in 1939, experienced the war, and lived through the expulsion from the Sudetenland. So for me, these were deeply personal and very natural themes to explore.

You’re touching a sore spot there. We hardly ever filmed at the school itself—there’s only one single, very short film sequence that captures a design process: the development of a butcher’s knife. And that’s it. I deeply regret that we didn’t document our daily life back then.

I completed my studies in 1966 and continued working for several years as a freelance collaborator at the Institute for Film Design. But it wasn’t until long after the school had closed—and after I had established myself as an independent filmmaker—that the idea of dedicating a film to the HfG took shape. I began searching for people, projects, and companies where the influence of the HfG could still be felt.

It was during my time as a student that I discovered my passion for “good design.” Even today, I sit at home on a Bill stool, wear a Braun watch, and prefer to write using Rotis—the typeface developed by Otl Aicher. And whenever I touch a door handle, I find myself checking whether it meets Aicher’s “Four-Point Guide to Good Grip””—like the ones made by FSB. That’s how the films in my edition disegno series came into being.

That’s true. And it’s clearly due in large part to the radical consistency of people like Otl Aicher, who refused to make compromises when it came to design. To some of his clients, he came across as a relentless dictator—he would often begin by urging them to reflect on themselves.

Aicher saw the role of the designer as that of a philosopher within the company—a perspective that remains highly relevant even today. There’s no doubt the HfG would have its hands full in the world we live in now.

There are still companies today that are shaped by the Ulm School’s philosophy and continue to carry it forward—true to the Bauhaus motto that “ornament is a crime.” FSB, for instance, still places its focus on the ergonomic quality of design and the ecological value of materials—Aicher’s influence is still very much alive.

The company also collaborates with architects who are keenly aware of the ecological imperatives of our time, which speaks to the lasting impact of the HfG. Environmental responsibility was already a topic at the HfG long before society at large knew about it—or wanted to.

After being broadcast on television, my films were only available on VHS tapes. In recent years, I’ve received more and more inquiries—particularly from university libraries—asking if the films could finally be made available in digital form, as DVDs.

I’m therefore especially pleased to have found a partner and sponsor in FSB, who is helping me meet this growing demand. There’s now a box set with all six discs—naturally designed in the spirit of Ulm by designwerk in Augsburg.

Who knows—maybe the films will help bring the story of the HfG back into the public eye!

One of the most important films for me is Otl Aicher, der Denker am Objekt. It was made shortly before his tragic death. Aicher had long refused to speak on camera. He considered himself a homme de lettre, as he put it. But we managed to convince him—perhaps because I had once been his student.

After our shoot, Aicher left for his summer break. He always said he was heading to Greenland—his way of saying he was going far away—to his Greenland in Rotis, in the Allgäu, where he spent time in his garden. We had planned to travel together to the Basque Country in autumn so I could accompany him on camera while he worked on the new visual identity for the city of Bilbao. That never came to be.

But in my film, I like to think that he lives on.