Alkuin
Charlemagne’s adviserAlcuin was an important scholar, head of the palace school in Aachen and advisor to Charlemagne. These positions explain his influence in the Frankish imperial court.
Ludovico Vincentino degli Arrighi
A writer of Papal documentsLudovico degli Arrighi hailed from the Italian city of Vincenza, which gave rise to his now commonly-used sobriquet of “Vincentino”. Very little is known about the circumstances of his life.
Assurbanipal
An Assyrian library founderThe literate Assyrian king Assurbanipal commissioned a cuneiform script archive in his palace in Nineveh (modern-day Iraq) that can be considered one of the very first national libraries. In amassing his collection, he commissioned scribes from all across his empire to copy texts.
Keith Bates
Pioneer of the Mailart movementKeith Bates was born in 1951 in Liverpool, England. He studied graphic design at the Didsbury College of Education in Manchester and worked until 2009 as an art and design instructor.
Andreas Friedrich Bauer
Friedrich Koenig’s partner at the invention of the high-speed printing pressThe son of a craftsman, Andreas Friedrich Bauer had been to grammar school in Stuttgart and university in Tübingen. He finished his apprenticeship as a Doctor of Philosophy at the instrument manufacturer Baumann. He subsequently went to England in 1805 out of technological interest and got to know the German book printer and mechanical engineer Friedrich Koenig in London.
Walter Benjamin
Analyst of cultural mass productionWalter Benjamin is considered one of the most significant art and media theorists of the first half of the 20th century, particularly for his relatively short essays A Short History of Photography (1931) and The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936). At the core of his theory is the artistic concept of the modern, whose essential characteristic Benjamin sees as the possibility for mechanical reproduction: in his view, before the 19th century artworks were primarily defined by an aura of singularity which lent them a ritualistic cult value.
Emil Berliner
Inventor oft the gramophone and recordHanover-born Emil Berliner, not yet 20 years old, emigrated to the USA in 1870 to avoid conscription during the Franco-Prussian War. In New York he found work as a casual labourer while also studying physics on the side.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Founder of the World Wide Web and HTMLOn Christmas Eve 1990, British physicist Tim Berners-Lee, then employed by the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva (CERN), launched a new chapter in media and communications history – largely out of the public eye. Under the address http://info.cern.ch he presented the first online website on his NeXt computer and so laid the cornerstone for Internet technology which would radically change human coexistence around the globe within a few years.
Axel Bertram
Designer of magazines and objects for bibliophile collectorsIn 1960, after studies in graphic design at the Hochschule für Bildende und angewandte Kunst (Academy of Visual and Applied Art) in the Berlin district of Weißensee, Axel Bertram began working as a freelance graphic artist in the same German city. In conjunction with three university classmates, he founded the studio collective Gruppe 4, which quickly rose to prominence thanks to projects such as the graphical redesign of Berlin’s Metropol Theatre.
Giambattista Bodoni
The best-known European printer around 1800The seed for Giambattista Bodoni’s interest in books was planted very early on. He was born in 1740 as the son of a printer and began his professional career at the age of 18 in Rome where he worked as a typesetter in the Vatican’s Propaganda Fide printing house.
Louis Braille
Inventor of the universal writing system for the blind and visually-impairedIn 1820, the eleven-year-old Louis Braille learned the system of so-called night writing for the first time. It was one of the first ever embossed type systems of writing and was invented by Charles Barbier, a Captain in the French army, and Braille immediately understood its potential.
Ulrich Bräker
A reading farmer in SwitzerlandThe day worker, farmer and cotton maker, Ulrich Bräker, from the Toggenburg district in the East of Switzerland, had a special passion: reading and communicating his conception of the world and reading culture.
Bertolt Brecht
Playwright and radio enthusiastBertolt Brecht was still a young author when he was commissioned to write his first educational play, entiteld Lindberghflug (Lindbergh’s Flight), for the Kammermusikfest (chamber music festival) of Baden-Baden in 1929, but he was also an established one thanks to the popularity of his The Threepenny Opera (1928). Inspired by the previous year’s Atlantic crossing by the American Charles Lindbergh, Brecht used the play to express his ideas about the democratic use of new radio technology.
Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus
The founder of the most famous German encyclopaediaFriedrich Arnold Brockhaus was not the inventor of the encyclopaedia, but he had such competent command of the business of publishing encyclopaedic dictionaries that he was able, initially in Altenburg and from 1817 onwards in Leipzig, to turn the Conversationslexikon mit vorzüglicher Rücksicht auf die gegenwärtigen Zeiten, acquired from Renatus Gotthelf Löbel on a visit to the Leipzig book fair in autumn 1808, into the foremost general German encyclopaedia.
Neville Brody
Unconventional graphics influenced by punkAs a young London-based designer, Neville Brody caused a stir in the typographical landscape of the 1980s, primarily through his work for the British lifestyle magazines The Face (1981-1986) and Arena (1987-1990). He developed the sans-serif typeface Industria for The Face, and also designed a string of album covers for alternative music labels, including designs for renowned pop acts such as Depeche Mode and Cabaret Voltaire.
Vannevar Bush
Visionary of human-computer interactionAfter studying and completing a doctorate at Harvard University, the American Vannevar Bush joined the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1919. As professor of electrical engineering he began developing several calculating machines in 1923. Initially they were used to solve differential equations and handle large amounts of data.
Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus
Monastery founder dedicated to the written wordThe Roman statesman, scholar and writer Cassiodorus contributed greatly to the preservation and transmission of the written and educational lore of antiquity to the Latin-speaking Occident.
Jean-François Champollion
A linguistic genius deciphers the code of the PharoahsJean-François Champollion, the linguistic child prodigy from southwestern France, had a profound ability to learn ancient languages with incredible ease, going on to master at least ten in his lifetime. When he was twelve, a member of Napoleon’s Egyptian expeditions showed him the first hieroglyphics.
Nicolaus Cusanus
The scholarly Cardinal Nicolaus Cusanus was one of the most productive scholars of the 15th century. Born Nikolaus Cryfftz in the town of Kues along the River Mosel, he studied in Heidelberg and Padova, acquiring an extensive knowledge of virtually all established fields of study.
Todd Dever
Bizarre typography for personal useBorn in 1962 in California, Todd Dever arrived in the typography industry after an initial career in music video production. In the mid-1990s, after searching in vain for a suitable font for former Frank Zappa guitarist Mike Keneally, Dever spontaneously decided to implement his own vision.
Albrecht Dürer
Media theoretician of the 16th centuryAlbrecht Dürer, born into a family of goldsmiths and a citizen of Nuremberg often described as the greatest German artist of all time, began an apprenticeship with the painter Michael Wolgemut in 1486 at his own urging. It was in his workshop that many of the woodcuts for the Schedelsche Weltchronik were completed. Periods of stay in Alsace and Basel as well as a journey to Venice preceded the founding of his own workshop in his home town.
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Relentless critic of modern media operationsFrom the 1950s onwards, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, who came to prominence as a poet, also made a name for himself as a left-leaning critic of the conservative Adenauer republic. It was not only literary publications such as verteidigung der wölfe (Defending the Wolves) from 1957, but also his wide-ranging journalism that had a significant influence on intellectual and art theory debate.
Carl Faulmann
A pioneer in the study of writing in the 19th centuryCarl Faulmann was born in Halle an der Saale in 1835 and initially trained to be a typesetter. A subsequent phase of extensive travels led him to Munich, where in 1854 he saw shorthand types from the Royal Court and State Printers in Vienna. Harry C. Gammeter
Inventor of the Multigraph machineHarry C. Gammeter first of all worked for a typewriter company in Kentucky. In around 1900 he constructed the prototype for a machine that generated reproductions using a rotary drum. This meant that circular letters or invoices could be generated without having to always write them from scratch.
Claude Garamond
Type founder at the King’s orderMost likely born in 1499 in Paris, Claude Garamond began an apprenticeship as a book printer in 1510 in the workshop of the humanist, engraver and typographer Antoine Augereau. His first typographical works probably date back to the beginning of the 1530s, a notable example being the so-called Cicero typeface which was re-cut by his countryman Jean Jannon in 1620 and distributed under the name Garamond.
Ludwig Goller
The father of German number platesAfter an apprenticeship as a precision mechanic and studies in engineering, the Hamburg native Ludwig Goller pursued a professional career in the service of Berlin’s municipal power utilities company the Berliner Elektrizitätswerke. After periods of employment for the German electrical equipment producer AEG and the optics manufacturer Carl Zeiss, Goller arrived at Siemens’ Berlin branch in 1920, where he was tasked with setting up a central standards office. He retained the position until his retirement in 1945.
Georg Friedrich Grotefend
Decipherer of unknown worlds of scriptThe grammar school teacher Georg Friedrich Grotefend was a highly-enthusiastic solver of riddles. In his search for a “universal writing system” he succeeded, in 1802, in deciphering 13 characters of the Persian cuneiform script which up to that point had not been understood for centuries.
Johannes Gutenberg
An inventor with many facesAs the inventor of the technique of printing with moveable type, Johannes Gutenberg is a global historical figure of immense importance but, at the same time, a person about whom little is known.
Wilhelm Hauff
More than a teller of fairy tales Born as the son of a civil service clerk, Wilhelm Hauff studied theology in Tübingen from 1820 to 1824 and then became a tutor in the household of Baron von Hügel, the war council president from Wurttemberg. His literary output began at this time with the Märchen-Almanach auf das Jahr 1826 für Söhne und Töchter gebildeter Stände (Fairytale Almanac for the year 1826 for the Sons and Daughters of the Educated Classes), published in 1825.
Heinrich Heine
Satire against censorshipHeinrich Heine’s criticism of Germany’s political culture attracted the attention of the country’s literary censors who banned many of his works. His encounters with the authorities who tried to silence him were, however, artistically productive in terms of the satirical work he produced as a response.
Johann Gottfried Herder
Enlightenment thinker, theologian, cultural philosopherJohann Gottfried Herder was born in the East Prussian city of Mohrungen in 1744 and studied theology from 1762 in Königsberg (today Kaliningrad), where he attended lectures by Immanuel Kant, among others. It was at this time that he composed his first literary, philosophical and cultural-historical works.
Sophronius Eusebius Hieronymus
Translator of the BiblePaintings often depict Jerome as a hermit living in a modest dwelling with a tame lion. While the taming of the lion remains in the realm of legend, the eremitic life of the future saint in Syria has been verified.
Augustine of Hippo
Theologian, bishop and autobiographer during the final years of the Roman EmpireAugustine was born in the year 354 to a pagan father and a Christian mother in the North African city of Thagaste (now Souk Ahras), and lived in a time of transition between Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Only three decades prior, the Roman Emperor Constantine had publicly declared himself a Christian; around 150 years later the greatest empire of Classical times was in ruins.
Karlgeorg Hoefer
From the universal quill to a calligraphy workshop for everyoneAfter an apprenticeship as a typesetter in Hamburg, Karlgeorg Hoefer completed his training as a graphic designer at Offenbach’s Hochschule für Gestaltung academy where he went on to teach as a professor of typography. He was assigned that post in 1946 in Offenbach’s municipal Meisterschule for design-based craft.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
Romantic with a sharp tongueE.T.A. Hoffmann, today remembered primarily as an author of fantastic fairy tales and novellas, was a lifelong sharp-tongued critic of the authoritarian Prussian state.
Herman Hollerith
Inventor of the punch card systemAs the child of immigrants from the Palatinate region of Germany, Herman Hollerith had already completed his training as a mining engineer at the age of 19 and he worked on the American census of 1880. From then on he looked into the question of saving data.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Statesman, education reformer, linguistAlong with his globe-trotting younger brother Alexander, Wilhelm von Humboldt – born in Potsdam in 1767 – is regarded as the quintessential Prussian polymath of his age. He left lasting legacies as a reformer of the education system, diplomat and statesmen.
Edward Johnston
Self-taught typescript designer from the Arts and Crafts movementEdward Johnston was born in Uruguay as the son of a Scottish army officer. He entered the typography industry having initially studied medicine, a field he moved away from after being inspired by the handwriting section of the British Museum in London and by William Morris and his circle of designers.
Erhard Kaiser
From the printing city of Leipzig to the DutchTypeLibraryErhard Kaiser was born in Quedlinburg in 1957. After receiving his high school diploma, he studied at Leipzig’s Academy of Visual Arts.
Friedrich Gottlob Keller
The inventor of modern paperFriedrich Gottlob Keller’s father was a weaving and reed binding master, his nine siblings died early. He did not fulfil his desire for a qualified technical training so he also became a weaver and reed binder. After completing his journeyman years in 1834, he spent eight years working intensively but to no avail on a perpetual motion machine.
Harry Graf Kessler
Diplomat, patron of the arts and bibliophileDiplomat, dandy, artist, sophisticate, compulsive diarist, alleged illegitimate son of the German Kaiser – Kessler was a dazzling personality in the cultural life of his epoch. He attempted to unite life and art in Germany as William Morris had in England.
Athanasius Kircher
A Jesuit seeking the very first writingThe Jesuit Athanasius Kircher was one of the greatest polymaths of the 17th century. Although he was originally earmarked as a court mathematician in Vienna, Kircher ultimately settled in Rome where his study of Coptic handwriting acted as a basis for his attempts to solve the riddle of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Heinrich Klemm
Successful tailor with a weakness for print historyBorn as the son of a tailor and made an orphan early in life, Heinrich Klemm also completed an apprenticeship in tailoring and went on his journeyman years. In 1844 he founded a drawing institute for dressmakers and two years later published his first title, the Vollständiges Lehrbuch der modernen Zuschneidekunst und Bearbeitung sämmtlicher Herrenkleider (The Complete Teaching Book for the Art of Modern Tailoring and Working with all Men’s Clothing).
Victor Klemperer
Working as a censor in the Deutsche BüchereiThe writer and novelist Victor Klemperer, after a stay in military hospital, succeeded in not returning to the front but, arranged for by his brother, was posted instead to the Book Assessment Office of the Eastern Command. After a short tour in Kaunas, Lithuania, he arrived in Leipzig in August 1916.
Alexander Kluge
Professional provocateur in mainstream televisionIn spite of successfully completing a doctorate in law, at the end of the 1950’s Alexander Kluge turned his attention to the arts. After an internship at the CCC-Film production company, he directed Abschied von gestern (Yesterday Girl) in 1960 – one of the key works that helped to shape the style of New German Cinema and in 1962 Kluge was one of the signatories of the Oberhausen Manifesto, the programmatic foundation document of the movement.
Anton Koberger
Printer, book trader, large-scale entrepreneurAnton Koberger opened a print workshop in Nuremberg in 1472. It was already organised like a factory and soon had at least 15 printing presses and was efficient enough to manage printing Schedel’s Weltchronik (Wolrd Chronicle), a huge work with around 1,800 woodcut illustrations printed in Latin and German.
Rudolf Koch
A master of blackletter typefacesBetween 1892 and 1896 Rudolf Koch, who was born the son of a sculptor father, successfully completed an apprenticeship as a chaser before going onto train as a drawing instructor at the Nürnberg Kunstgewerbeschule (school of arts and crafts) and Munich’s Technische Hochschule (Technical University). In 1906, after an interim spell in Leipzig, he took up a creative post at the Rudhardschen type foundry (later known as Klingspor Brothers) in Offenbach am Main while also working as a teacher at the same city’s technical academy.
Friedrich Koenig
Inventor of the jobbing and cylinder pressRemoved early from secondary school for economic reasons, Friedrich Koenig learned his trade at the Leipzig printing company Breitkopf & Härtel. An autodidact, he learned his mathematics and mechanical skills on his own, and he attended lectures at Leipzig University as a guest.
Nikolaus Kopernikus
An astronomer revolutionises humanity’s view of the worldTwo months after Nicolaus Copernicus died, his epochal book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), which upended the prevailing geocentric worldview, was published in Nuremberg. The astronomer, who hailed from Thorn (present-day Toruń) on the River Vistula, recognised that it was the Sun rather than the Earth which was the mid-point of the universe.
Siegfried Kracauer
The founder of film sociologyAmong the hugely varied achievements of Siegfried Kracauer, it is his sociocultural studies that particularly stand out today. After studying architecture, he became editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung in 1922 and in the following years published his two much-revered studies Das Ornament der Masse (The Mass Ornament) in 1927 and Die Angestellten (The Salaried Masses) in 1930, in which he began his examinations of the interactions of art and society.
Günter Gerhard Lange
Commitment in phototypesetting and type libraryGünther Gerhard Lange was a man who was hardly known among the public and yet he revolutionised the graphic industry within a few decades. His work for the company H. Berthold AG in Berlin, which was founded in 1858, led to the presentation of the first phototypesetting machine – the Diatype – 100 years later.
Tolbert Langston
Founder of the Monotype typesetting methodIn Europe his name is all but unknown, but Tolbert Lanston achieved significant advancements for the printing industry. After fighting in the American civil war, he worked for the government pension department and met Hermann Hollerith, the inventor of the punch card method, there.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Philosopher, natural scientist and inventorLawyer’s son Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz already attended Leipzig University at the age of 14 and, while strolling in Rosenthal, he pondered the great philosophical concepts which had dominated western thinking since the Antique.
Louis Lemoine
Designer of Walt Disney’s amusement parksLouis L. Lemoine completed an art degree at California State University in Los Angeles as a design major. In the 1980s he worked as an instructor at the city’s Trade Technical College and obtained a lifelong teaching licence for California’s community colleges.
Justus von Liebig
Chemist, entrepreneur and name giver for the “Liebigbilder” (Liebig pictures – collectors’ pieces)The son of a druggist and paint dealer from Darmstadt had already achieved the title of professor in Giessen at the age of 21 after finishing his studies in chemistry in Bonn and Erlangen. He maintained this position until 1852 and then transferred to Munich.
El Lissitzky
A representative of the Russian avant-gardeEl Lissitzky studied architecture from 1909 to 1914 at the Polytechnic University in Darmstadt before returning to his native Russia, where he undertook courses at a number of institutions including the Vitebsk Art School and the architecture department of the State Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops (Vkhutemas), a state-run art school in Moscow.
Herb Lubalin
Avant-garde graphics from New York for the advertising industryAmong typography aficionados, Herb Lubalin’s name is inextricably linked to one font above all others. His Avante Garde typeface is considered, retrospectively, either an innovative, trendsetting typeface or, conversely, the epitome of soulless formalism. A fifty-year-old Lubalin designed the Avante Garde font in 1968 for the newly founded lifestyle magazine of the same name.
Niklas Luhmann
Systems theory from a card index boxEven today, opinion is split on Niklas Luhmann’s life’s work in sociology – systems theory. Critics regard it as an easily understandable abstract theory made in an ivory tower of academia that avoids any kind of moral position; it's proponents view it as a innovative approach to observing human interaction.
Martin Luther
The ReformerPrinting was as important for the Reformation as the internet is today for the dissemination of revolutionary ideas. Martin Luther was the first person to make extensive use of the medium of popular prints in order to spread his ideas of a true Christianity.
E. Marlitt
Opera singer – public reader – bestselling author After the loss of her hearing had abruptly ended her fledgling musical career, the classically-trained singer Eugenie John began, in 1853, to serve the Princess of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen as a social attendant, travel companion, reader of literature and composer of letters.
Pierre Marteau
Getting past the censor with fake imprintsSeveral hundred books appear from one publisher over the course of around two hundred years, a publisher like no other until then. The enterprising mock publishing house that went by the names of Pierre Marteau or Peter Hammer operated in Cologne at some times, in Amsterdam at others, more rarely at other locations.
Hrabanus Maurus
Abbot at the spiritual heart of the Frankish EmpireHrabanus Maurus was a renowned scholar from an early age. He became a leading figure of the Carolingian Renaissance after spending time at the court of Charlemagne and as a pupil of Alcuin
Marshall McLuhan
The medium is the message.Marshall McLuhan was born in 1911 in Alberta, Canada and became a professor at the University of Toronto in 1952. Due to his influential published works, and also due to his charismatic personality he is regarded as one of the most important media theorists of the 20th century.
Philipp Melanchthon
The humanistPhilipp Schwartzerdt was a man of small stature, susceptible to illness but exceptionally talented. Using the Greek form of his name, Melanchthon, he became one of the most revered scholars of the Renaissance period.
Max Miedinger
Creator of a typographic world brand from SwitzerlandIn the second half of the 1950s, the Swiss graphic designer Max Miedinger created, in Helvetica, one of the defining typefaces of the 20th century. He developed his professional expertise by means of a typesetting apprenticeship and studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich (now Zurich University of the Arts).
Stanley Morison
New design for a world famous magazineThe striking new letter design introduced in The Times of London on October 3, 1932 signalled the beginning of an unexpected typographical success story. Within just a few years, Times New Roman had become the widely established font standard for book design.
William Morris
Artist, manual worker and social reformerThe books issued by the Kelmscott Press, established in the London district of Hammersmith in 1891, were products of a new style: the Arts and Crafts Movement. The aesthetic programme set by William Morris, the founder of the press, was to make the entire living environment into a gesamtkunstwerk.
Robin Nicholas
Long-standing director of typography at Monotype UKBorn in 1947 in Westerham, in the English county of Kent, Robin Nicholas was hired by the London-based Monotype Corporation in 1965, a company that was at that time still largely known as a manufacturer of typesetting machinery. He began his career at Monotype as an apprentice in the company’s type drawing office, which he went on to manage for a period of 10 years, starting in 1982.
Aldo Novarese
Creator of his own typeface classification system Aldo Novarese was born in the small Italian town of Pontestura Monferrato in 1920. He attended the Scuola Arteri Stampatori school of graphic art in nearby Turin from 1931 to 1933 where he studied wood engraving, copper engraving and lithography.
Johann Philipp Palm
A victim of Napoleonic justice On the 16 July, 1806, three copies of the banned anonymous pamphlet Deutschland in seiner tiefen Erniedrigung (Germany in its Deep Humiliation) were confiscated in an Augsburg bookshop. Under interrogation, the book dealer revealed that the pamphlets had been delivered to him by the Stein book dealership in Nuremburg.
Heinrich August Pierer
Groundbreaking lexicographer of the 19th century Heinrich August Pierer, a graduate of Landesschule Pforta (“Schulpforta”), was the son of a doctor and publisher. As a young man he was in the Lützow Free Corps, was wounded in 1813 in the Battle of Leipzig and took part in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Beginning in1820, he worked in his father's printing company.
Plinius the Elder
The writing natural scientistThe Roman career officer and scholar Gaius Plinius Secundus maior, or Pliny the Elder, was one of the most well-read and well-travelled men of his era. His appetite for reading and passion for writing have left behind a compendium of 160 book rolls inscribed on both sides – more than two kilometres of text.
Carl Ernst Poeschel
A pioneer of the book art movementCarl Ernst Poeschel studied book printing between 1892 and 1896 in his father’s Leipzig printing press, Poeschel & Trepte. After working as a typesetter and printer in Halle, Zwickau and Munich, and conducting a study trip to the USA, he became general manager and finally director of his father’s company.
Neil Postman
The media as machinery of mass stupidityIn the 1980s the American Neil Postman, who became Professor of Communications Science at the University of New York in 1959, started a wide public debate on the uses and dangers of the medium of television with the provocative title of his book Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985).
Sima Qian
A Chinese HerodotusAs the court astrologist of the Chinese imperial family, Sima Qian – over the course of many long journeys and largely thanks to his access to royal archives – was able to gather source material for the compilation of a history of China.
Wilhelm Raabe
School dropout and successful authorAfter the publication of his novel Die Chronik der Sperlingsgasse (1856 or 1857), Wilhelm Raabe achieved considerable success as a professional author within a very short period who was able to live exclusively from the money he earned from his publications. It may be a comfort to many young people to know that Wilhelm Raabe dropped out of school in Wolfenbüttel, prematurely ended his training as a book trader in Magdeburg and was only a guest student at Berlin’s university.
Anton Philipp Reclam
Publisher ofworld literature at affordable pricesThe publisher’s son Anton Philipp Reclam had been versed in all aspects of book printing since his apprenticeship. Neither type founding nor book printing were unfamiliar to him.
Paul Renner
Clarity and simplicity in book designingPaul Renner first completed studies in architecture and painting before taking up employment as a book designer for the Georg Müller publishing house in Munich in 1907.
Arthur Schnitzler
Author of a self-censored erotic scandal piece With his stage piece Reigen, completed in 1997 and first published in 1903, the renowned Viennese doctor and writer Arthur Schnitzler provoked a literary scandal, which assumed tumultuously large proportions in particular after its first public performances in Germany and Austria in 1920/21.
Ansgar Schoppmeyer
The last illuminatorTo copy the works of medieval illumination, you have to be not just an artist, but also a scientist, with a precise understanding of the colours used and the specifics of the workshops. Ansgar Schoppmeyer was both of these things. After completing training as an artisan as well as studies in palaeography and art history, he qualified as a professor in 1892 with his work on the history of script and illumination.
Alois Senefelder
Inventor of lithographyAlois Senefelder, son of a Munich court actor, had enjoyed piano and singing lessons as a pupil before studying law in Ingolstadt. In search of a means of reproducing his own literary works, he carried out trials for years. His Vollstaendiges Lehrbuch der Steindruckerey (A Complete Course of Lithography), which was published in Munich in 1818, was written to provide information about the method.
Fred Smeijers
Typography for a Dutch state newspaperFred Smeijers was born in 1961 in the Dutch city of Eindhoven. He studied at the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in Arnhem before starting his design career in 1986, creating typefaces for laser printers.
Jason Smith
Corporate Design from LondonBorn in 1971 in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, Jason Smith studied calligraphy, lettering and signwriting and completed his degree as part of an illustration class at the Reigate Art College in Redhill, County Surrey, England. He initially developed logo ideas for the famous graphic designer David Quay before switching to the Wagstaffs Design agency in London, where he developed lettering for corporate brands.
Erik Spiekermann
Self-appointed Berlin “typomaniac”Able to look back at a vast graphic portfolio, the designer Erik Spiekermann ranks among the most important practitioners of his craft. His fields of expertise include classical font creation and holistic design solutions - for example the signage systems for both Berlin’s public transport infrastructure and Düsseldorf International Airport.
Gerard van Swieten
Personal physician and censorGerard van Swieten from Leiden was called to Vienna and appointed imperial personal physician and prefect of the imperial library by Empress Maria Theresia in 1745. From 1759 on and against the bitter resistance of the Jesuits, he effected a relaxation in the censorship regulations in his capacity as head of the Studien- und Büchercensur-Hofkommission (Court Academic and Book Censorship Commission).
Walter Tiemann
Font designer, typographer, illustrator and co-founder of Janus PresseWalter Tiemann, born in Delitzsch in 1876, began studying painting in 1894 at the Academy of Arts in Leipzig and the Applied Arts School in Dresden, and also undertook a study trip to Paris. In 1903 he became a teacher of book printing, illustration and pure and applied graphic arts at the Royal Academy for Graphic Arts and Book Printing in Leipzig.
Johann Georg Tinius
Clergyman, bibliomaniac, murdererIn 1813 a wealthy Leipzig widow was robbed and murdered. The motive: money to buy books. The murder weapon: a hammer for adjusting bookcases.
Jan Tschichold
Theoretician of the Elementary typographyBorn in Leipzig as the son of a signwriter, Jan Tschichold initially trained as a teacher of calligraphy. He ended his apprenticeship after three years, however, before going on to study at the Akademie für grafische Künste (Academy of Graphic Arts) in Leipzig, where he learned engraving techniques (including wood engraving), chalcography, woodcut and bookbinding.
Johann Friedrich Unger
Editions of literary classics in the Antiqua typefaceAfter following in the professional footsteps of his father and completing apprenticeships as a woodcutter and book printer, Johann Friedrich Unger opened his own printing house in Berlin in 1870. After the closure of the Luther type foundry in Frankfurt am Main, Unger took over that company’s complete typographical portfolio.
Dorothea Viehmann
The fairytale womanThe second volume of the Brothers Grimm work Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales) was published in 1815 with a foreword that included a tribute to the storytelling of a poor woman from Hesse. Dorothea Viehmann contributed over 40 stories to the most famous collection of fairytales in existence. The idea that she was a poor woman with a humble background has since been debunked as a marketing strategy by the Brothers Grimm.
Friedrich Theodor Vischer
Literature expert, author, politicianFrom 1825 to 1830 Friedrich Theodor Vischer, born in 1807 as the son of a minister, studied theology and philosophy in Tübingen and gained his doctorate in 1836 in aesthetics and literature. He became an associate professor in 1837, and full professor in1844.
Johann Jacob Weber
A Leipzig newspaper publisher banks on the power of imagesThough born of humble circumstances, when the book dealer Johann Jacob Weber finally settled in Leipzig in 1830, he brought a wealth of experience to the task. He had apprenticed with E. Thurneysen in Basel, then worked as an assistant in Paris before working for Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig and Herder in Freiburg.
Georg Friedrich Wehrs
The paper researcherBorn in Hanover, Georg Friedrich Wehrs studied jurisprudence in Göttingen before working as an advocate and then a notary. He had an influence as a supervisor at the Intelligenz-Comtoir in Hanover and at the same time as an agent for Bremen und Mecklenburg-Strelitz. As a result he made a name for himself as an economic writer.
Emil Rudolf Weiß
Holistic book design in the early 20th centuryFor over half a century, Emil Rudolf Weiß ranked as the most important book artist in Germany. His work not only involved every aspect of the book design process – typesetting, typeface, illustration, cover and dust jacket design – but he also regularly published his own poetic texts, thereby producing complete works of art.
Gert Wiescher
Font designer, author and creator of GlyphArtGert Wiescher was born in 1944 in the Swabian Kochertal region. After completing his schooling he travelled to Paris where he made a living as a freelance artist. From 1967 to 1968 he studied at the University of the Arts in Berlin, where he came into contact with the already passionate “typomaniac” Erik Spiekermann, who in turn inspired Wiescher to take up a career in typographical design.
Hermann Zapf
German font design with international standingHermann Zapf’s passion for typeface design can be traced back to his apprenticeship as a retoucher. After spending his youth in Nuremberg he moved to Frakfurt in 1938 and in the same year began developing typefaces.
Konrad Zuse
A computer pioneer from GermanyKonrad Zuse studied machine building, architecture and construction engineering at the Technical College of Berlin and, after completing his studies, he worked as a structural engineer at the Henschel aeroplane plant. Driven by the aim to make structural calculations as quickly as possible he decided to set off on an independent path as an inventor one year later and set up a workshop in his parents’ flat.
