The founding of the first professional association of industrial designers in Stuttgart in 1959 marked the beginning of a professionalization of product design in West Germany. Yves Vincent Grossmann demonstrates in his social history of industrial designers how designers repositioned themselves in response to issues arising from the oil crises, postmodernism, and globalization: they increasingly took on the role of crisis managers, as despite the "Iron Curtain," industrial relationships between East and West remained intact. Four companies are examined as examples: BASF AG, Siemens AG, Rosenthal AG, and MAN AG.