Ferdinand Kramer was a German architect and functionalist designer.Kramer's father was the owner of the most famous hat shop in Frankfurt. In 1916 Kramer joined the military service and remained a soldier until the end of the First World War. The following year he studied at the Bauhaus. Between 1925 and 1930 Kramer worked for the architect and civil planner Ernst May constructing and equipping the housing projects of New Frankfurt, and contributed to the second conference CIAM. After conflicts with the Nazi regime and its professional disqualification, Kramer emigrated to the United States in 1938 and worked in a variety of projects, including working with Norman Bel Geddes on designs for the World 's Fair in New York in 1939, designs furniture inexpensive "knock-down" and orders his friend Theodor Adorno for the Institute of Social Research in the years that he stayed in New York. On his return to Germany in 1947, Kramer taught and director at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt until his retirement in 1964.