1971 Henri Friedländer

Writer and Typographer / Israel, Jerusalem

Born in Lyon in 1904 and deceased in Jerusalem in 1996, Henri Friedlaender completed a two-year apprenticeship in graphic arts and crafts right after school in Berlin. In 1925 he moved to Leipzig and completed there the examination for the master craftsman's certificate in manual typesetting. In addition to his work as a typesetter at Teubner and Wirth in Dresden and at Jakob Hegner in Hellerau, he also worked for the printing house of Klingspor. Then he worked as a typographic designer at Hartung in Hamburg and as an akzidenzfaktor and dispatcher at Haag-Drugulin in Leipzig. In 1932 he moved to the Netherlands and became Artistic Director of the printing company Mounton & Co. in Haag, where he created typographic works and typefaces with German influence as well as a textbook and trade journals. During the occupation years from 1940 to 1945 he had to secretly print his prints. In 1950 he took over the management and construction of the Hadassah printing school in Jerusalem and finally devoted himself to book design again in 1970. He did not want to be seen as a typographer, but as a "craftsman". In 1971, Friedländer received the Gutenberg Prize of the City of Mainz and the International Gutenberg Society for outstanding achievements in the spirit of Gutenberg. As a second winner of the Gutenberg Prize, he is considered to be setting the course for the internationality of the award.