The call arrives with a deadline. An apartment in one of Frankfurt’s 1920s housing estates is being renovated, and its original fitted kitchen is scheduled for removal. Volunteers grab their slotted screwdrivers and spattles, chisels and hammers; they may have only a few days to save the cook space before it’s gone for good.

The rescuers come from the Ernst-May-Gesellschaft—or the Ernst May Society, in English—a 23-year-old nonprofit dedicated to preserving surviving examples of the Frankfurt Kitchen, arguably the single most important development in modern kitchen design. “Every contemporary kitchen is based on the DNA of the Frankfurt Kitchen,” says Laura Gerlach, whose photographic archive of extant interiors, The Library of Frankfurt Kitchens , has been exhibited at the society’s show house. “The Frankfurt Kitchen marked a turning point in architecture and in the concept of living and radically scrutinized and rethought the idea of housework.…