One of the best industrial makers of the 20th century, Wilhelm Wagenfeld is a designer and teacher of the famous Bauhaus design school. Acknowledged popularly as the founder of the Wagenfeld Lampe, Wagenfeld is one of the traditional icons of industrial design, with some still being produced to this day.

Born April 15, 1900 in Bremen, Germany, Wilhelm Wagenfeld revised drawing at an early period at a local school and was beginner at the Silberwarenfabrik Koch& Bergfeld. By 1918, Wagenfeld in the end entered the Academy of Hanau but later transferred to the Bauhaus school in Weimar. During his voyage period at Bauhaus, Wagenfeld cooperated with colleague Karl Jacob Jucker on various designs, including the well-known Wagenfeld Lampe and the Moka Machine espresso maker. Wagenfeld was greatly influenced by the modernist aesthetics fostered at the Bauhaus, and in spite of desolate criticism from his friends became one of the school's most victorious genius.

His studies at the Bauhaus ended, Wagenfeld went on to work with some firms and factoriesm as well as the Lausitzer Glassworks industrial unit, the Glaswerk Schott & Gen., Braun, and the kitchenware manufacture WMF. Wagenfeld also instructed at the Bauhaus school and at the Berlin Berlin Staatliche Kunsthochschule in 1931. When World War II happened, Wagenfeld was among the minority who declined to flee war-torn Germany, and was in the long run sent to the Eastern front and incarcerated at a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp. Wagenfeld was out after the war, and made his own creation studio, the Werkstatt Wagenfeld, which he supervised until 1978. By the 1980s, Wagenfeld worked numerous of his creations, of which included the Wagenfeld Lampe, so that they can be mass-produced more competently.

Wagenfeld is still in teaching and creating designs until his death in May 1990. Now, his heritage continues to live on through productions of the Wagenfeld Lampe and his other designs that are still being produed today.