In mid-20th-century Europe, Margerete Jahny belonged to a rare demographic of industrial designer: She was an East German female. And according to design historian Günter Höhne, she was the first East German industrial designer, of any gender, with a university education.

The German Democratic Republic, as East Germany was ironically called, had a Central Institute of Design (later called the Office for Industrial Design) that oversaw all ID-related matters in the GDR. In the 1960s, the Institute tasked Jahny and fellow designer Erich Müller with designing a set of tableware for use in GDR canteens.

Jahny, who had worked in a restaurant as a child, understood the needs of servers; indeed she had already designed a coffee service system as a student, while studying at the Dresden University of Fine Arts. She dusted off her old designs, which consisted of stackable coffee cups, a creamer, a coffee pot with a no-drip spout, and a lid that could fit all three objects. All were to be made of ceramics, a material Jahny had gained familiarity with while working in a ceramics factory.

Image: Von Christos Vittoratos - CC BY-SA 3.0

Müller refined the design of the lid, which required tight production tolerances to stay in place. He engineered it to stay put even when the coffee pot was held at a sharp angle, no small feat for a ceramic pressure fit.

The objects were well-designed and useful. A person could easily stack and carry multiple cups, and the coffee pot could be poured one-handed without needing the other hand to hold the lid on. The Rational line, as the objects were called, went into production in 1969 and was soon ubiquitous throughout the GDR.

Image: Von Christos Vittoratos - CC BY-SA 3.0

Though the Rational cups and pots came to populate every public institution, canteen, hotel and restaurant in the GDR, Jahny and Müller of course never received any recognition; in fact GDR leadership reportedly derided the designs as "functionalist," that term being a pejorative as it was associated with the Bauhaus and those evil West Germans.

Instead the objects became associated with the name "Mitropa." That organization, which ran the trains, train station restaurants and gas stations in the GDR, had their name branded on the objects.

Image: Von Softeis - CC BY-SA 3.0

The Rational line remained in production throughout the '70s and '80s (though it was added to by designers other than Jahny and Müller).

After the Berlin Wall came down, production was halted forever. Today you can still find some preserved Rational pieces on secondhand sites—though they're often branded, as this one is, "Mitropa" cups or pots.