From a Frankfurt workshop to a modern-design reference point

Braun began in Frankfurt in 1921, when engineer Max Braun established the business that would grow from radio components into consumer electrical products. After his death in 1951, his sons Artur and Erwin took over. The decisive post-war shift was not simply a new visual style: Erwin Braun and Dr Fritz Eichler opened the company to collaboration with the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm. Hans Gugelot and Otl Aicher worked with Braun’s internal team on a clearer, more systematic language for radios and record players.

Dieter Rams joined Braun in 1955 and became head of design in 1961, a position he held until 1995. With colleagues including Hans Gugelot, he helped establish products whose controls, materials and proportions made their purpose legible. The SK 4 radio-phonograph of 1956, with its transparent lid, and the electrostatic LE 1 loudspeaker of 1960 are now represented in MoMA’s design collection. They matter because the restraint was functional: information was ordered, operation was understandable and decoration did not obscure use.

Audio was central to that history. Braun’s original LE family belongs to the period in which the company treated domestic high fidelity as both engineering and interior architecture. Braun later left the audio category for almost three decades. The name returned at IFA Berlin in 2019 with new LE01, LE02 and LE03 wireless speakers. These are contemporary products rather than reissues of Dieter Rams’ electronics, but they deliberately carry forward the earlier range’s disciplined geometry and relationship between loudspeaker and stand.

The current commercial structure must be stated precisely. Procter & Gamble owns the relevant Braun trademarks; Braun Audio’s legal notice says Pure International Ltd is responsible for the design, manufacture and distribution of Braun Audio under licence from Procter & Gamble. The 2019 LE series was designed by the Braun Design Team in Kronberg and manufactured for the programme by Pure Europe. Dyke & Dean’s current published Braun range is one accessory—the dedicated LE02 floor stand—not a cross-category collection of Braun household appliances.