The Bundestag could change after the new elections, but the iconic chairs will remain the same. Parliament has been using “Figura” chairs from Vitra, known for their striking blue, for a good 25 years.
On December 27th, Frank-Walter Steinmeier dissolved the Bundestag. This became necessary after Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) lost the vote of confidence. There should be new elections almost two months later. What is already certain: the Bundestag will look different, not least because of the electoral law reform, which is intended to significantly reduce the size of Parliament.
What doesn’t change despite the political situation and despite the new composition of the Bundestag are the chairs on which the MPs sit: the armchairs with the distinctive blue cover and the black armrests will remain.
The blue colleagues come from the German factory of the Swiss company Vitra in Weil am Rhein; The company’s headquarters are in Birsfelden, not far from the German border. There are not many figures about Vitra; most recently the company is said to have had almost 700 employees, who generated sales of almost 300 million euros in 2017.
The choice for today’s chair of power was made in 1992, back then for the Bundestag in Bonn. It was former Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Bundestag President Rita Süssmuth (both CDU) who chose her. The name of the chair: “Figura”. The model had been around for a while at this point. The designer of the chair is the Italian Mario Bellini. In 1984 he created the model for Vitra AG.
When the Bundestag was about to move to Berlin, it quickly became clear: the selected chairs should be used there too. Contrary to the suggestion of star architect Sir Norman Foster, who designed the modern Reichstag dome for the new parliament building, they were again given a blue instead of gray cover.
The sentence of the then SPD politician Peter Conradi is legendary from this time: “Gray men with gray hair in gray suits on gray armchairs in front of gray tables on gray carpet and gray walls all around – who doesn’t feel horror?”
Therefore: the now well-known blue, which changes slightly depending on the light, sometimes almost appearing like violet. This special color may only be used by the Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany. Although Foster was against the color, he patented it as part of the overall ensemble under the particularly catchy name “Reichstag Blue”.
Since the first ceremonial plenary session under the new Reichstag dome on April 19, 1999, the blue Vitra chairs have been under special observation. There is probably no armchair that can be seen more often in the daily news and on news portals: the armchairs are probably the most famous chairs in Germany.
Does Vitra benefit financially from this? Actually not. They have not been produced or sold for a long time. Germany boss Roman Ehrhardt is therefore taking it easy that the electoral law reform will significantly reduce the size of the Bundestag. “The Figura chairs are a wonderful flagship for our company, but financially it’s not really relevant,” he told t-online.
The chairs have been in use for more than 25 years and not a single one of the blue chairs has had to be replaced, even though this could easily be done despite production stops. The reason: Before the Bundestag moved to Berlin, it bought a large number of chairs in reserve, as Ehrhardt reports. He didn’t want to say exactly how many.
The Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning (BBR), which was responsible for the renovation of the Reichstag building at the time, said in response to a request from t-online: “There are currently 48 chairs in the plenary hall in storage at the Bundestag administration.”