Walter Paepcke

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Walter Paepcke (1896–1960) was an executive of the Chicago-based Container Corporation of America, and founder of the Aspen Institute.

In 1922 he married Elizabeth Nitze. Her brother, Paul Nitze, later became head of Policy Planning in the State Department.[1]

In 1949 Paepcke made Aspen, Colorado the site for a celebration of the 200th birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Albert Schweitzer, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Thornton Wilder, and Artur Rubinstein all attended the celebration. The next year, Paepcke created what is now the Aspen Institute.

Paepcke hired Bauhaus designer Herbert Bayer and brought him to Aspen to promote the project through poster design and other design work; Paepcke was also the patron of fellow Bauhaus figure László Moholy-Nagy by financing the re-birth of the American New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1939. The New Bauhaus also had links to the Armour Institute of Technology.

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