The Vitra Design Museum shows how the power of kings, popes or top executives is reflected in their seating. Whether a throne or a designer piece, chairs have been used to demonstrate power throughout the ages.
Image: Getty Images/C. Platiau
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Seats of power
Whether it's the pope's throne or a designer sofa, some chairs serve as a symbol of power and contribute to the stagings of politics.
Image: Getty Images/C. Platiau
Fit for a king
French President Emmanuel Macron is a democrat, but the golden throne he is sitting on in this picture makes him look like a king. It shows how chairs still contribute to the staging of politics to this day.
Image: Getty Images/C. Platiau
Power without a throne
Muammar al-Gaddafi, the former leader of Libya, was for decades considered one of the most powerful men in Africa. Famous for his extravagant style, he sometimes had to go without basic luxury items on his trips abroad. At a meeting with the Tanzanian President at the African Union summit in Uganda in 2010, he was offered only a plastic chair.
Image: picture alliance/dpaDai Kurokawa
Holy chair
In the Middle Ages, the man in this seat was often more powerful than the emperors and kings. Today, the Pope is still one of the most influential men in the world — after all, he is the spiritual leader of nearly 1.3 billion people. This was the throne that accompanied John Paul II on his visit to Zagreb in Croatia in 1994.
Image: Roland Schmid
Relaxation for the elite
At the end of the 19th century, comfortable adjustable chairs became fashionable in the US. But relaxation had its price. At the time, rocking chairs like this one designed by George Wilson were only affordable for the rich. Such chairs therefore symbolized a form of power and influence at the beginning of modern times.
Image: Vitra Design Museum/Jürgen Hans
The world's security council
At first glance, the circular blue seats look quite simple. But when the UN Security Council meets, representatives of the world's most powerful countries take their seats. But the five permanent members, China, Russia, USA, France and the UK, have veto rights in this otherwise democratic-looking institution.
Image: Luca Zanier
Nothing but the best for 007
Even a secret agent sometimes has to sit, and Mies van der Rohe's Knoll Barcelona Chair (also called "MR90") is the seat of choice for 007. The German-American architect created this comfortable piece for the German Pavilion at the 1929 World Fair held in the Catalan city. Nearly 80 years later, it still has enough style to feature in the James Bond film "Casino Royale" (2006).
Image: Sony Pictures/ Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Women at the top
Few women have ever been in seats of power since Antiquity. Fortunately, that is changing today — even though we are still far from having achieved equal rights. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, IMF head Christine Lagarde and Ivanka Trump, the current US president's daughter and adviser, are seen here discussing the issue of gender parity at the 2017 W20 summit in Berlin.
Image: picture-alliance/Reuters/H. Hanschke
Symbol of a tragedy
This artwork by Mozambican designer Gonçalo Mabunda is titled "www.crise.com." With his throne of recycled weapons, the artist however does not want to draw attention to a website, but to the victims of the civil war that tore his home country apart from 1975 to 1992. Powerful clan chiefs in Mozambique were directly responsible for up to 900,000 victims of violence and hunger.
Image: Vitra Design Museum/Jürgen Hans
Sport, power and money
This photo of the meeting room of the FIFA Executive Committee in Zurich has a dystopian feel to it — perhaps fittingly so, considering the corruption scandals that have rocked the highest body of the world football association. In 2016, it was dissolved and replaced by the FIFA Council. This, however, didn't restrict much the power detained by the people in these black leather armchairs.
Image: Luca Zanier
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Sitting has a bad standing today: Doctors warn that it is bad for the back and blood circulation. Some even claim that sitting is the new form of smoking.
But apart from such health consequences, sitting has always been a symbol of power and strength. Of course, where and on which chair someone sits has always been decisive.
The Vitra Design Museum in southern Germany's Weil am Rhein is dedicating its current exhibition "Seats of Power" to the relationship between the powerful of this world and their seating.
Through some 20 selected objects from the museum's collection, the exhibition shows how political, social and economic power are still expressed in chairs today.
Heng Zhi is the curator of the exhibitionImage: Vitra Design Museum/B. Matthiessen
Sitting as a privilege of the powerful
The origins of the modern chair go back to the throne seats of antiquity. "Until the Middle Ages, elevated seating was reserved to rulers and the upper classes," curator Heng Zhi told DW. "At the time, sitting was not for reasons of comfort, but to convey authority."
Why seated? Wouldn't a ruler appear much bigger, more powerful and perhaps even more threatening standing up? "The symbols of power of the time were not simple chairs. The ruler sat elevated on an oversized, towering throne, which went far beyond their actual body size." Heng Zhi explained.
"The Pope's throne that we show in the exhibition, for example, has a backrest that is more than two meters high. The chair is also very wide. With such an object, a ruler can emphasize his position of power."
The spread of democracy through industrialization
The powerful today no longer occupy such opulent thrones but rather rest on far more modest seats. It took a long time to democratize the act of sitting to today's standards. The rise of the middle classes in the modern age allowed for this shift to take place: Chairs "were only democratized once industrial mass production became an option," said the curator. "The 19th century Thonet Chair was, for example, one of the first mass-produced chairs in history."
German carpenter Michael Thonet, the designer of this classic model, is seen as the father of the first "democratic" chairImage: picture-alliance/dpa/Thonet
It is not a coincidence that the democratization of furniture followed the overall proliferation of democratic values in the Western societies. Most national parliaments these days have a circular arrangement of seats. Many international institutions follow that example as well.
One picture shown at the exhibition highlights the assembly hall of the UN Security Council. "Representatives from each country take their seats in a circle there, and each seat comes with its own microphone. No one presides over the proceedings in this circle, at least not in a conventional sense. Everyone is represented as equal," pointed out Heng Zhi.
Regardless of such examples, there are still associations of power and status when it comes to chairs. "Differences in power are communicated in far more subtle manners," the curator told DW. Despite attempts to provide an overall image of equality, many of the powerful players in politics, economics, sports or culture keep expressing their status through the furniture they sit on. Sometimes it's just a minimal difference in height of a back rest, other times it's the use of higher quality materials. But a difference in power is still conveyed in chairs and seats designed today.
Heng Zhi obtained her PhD from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Since early 2016 she is the curator of the Vitra Design Museum.
