Henri Friedlaender

Henri Friedlaender (1904–1996) was an Israeli typographer and book designer. He co-founded the Hadassah Printing School and served as the first director of the school. Early life He was born in Lyon, France, in 1904 to a British mother, Rose Calmann and a German-Jewish father, Théodore Friedlaender, who was a silk merchant. His sister was the ceramic artist Marguerite Wildenhain. When he was six years old the family moved to Berlin where he attended the Mommsen-Gymnasium. In 1925, he moved to Leipzig, where he studied calligraphy and printing in Leipzig Academy of Graphic Arts. Career and personal life In 1930, Friedlaender started working on the Hebrew typeface Hadassah in Germany. He later worked with B. G. Teubner and with Wirth in Dresden, with Jakob Hegner in Hellerau, and for the Klingspor Type Foundry with Max Dorn. After working with Rudolf Koch he became a typographic designer with Hartung in Hamburg and later a printer and manager with Haag-Drugulin in Leipzig with Ernst Kellner. In 1932, Friedlaender immigrated to the Netherlands where he worked as art director of Drukkerij Mouton & Co. in The Hague. In 1940 Friedlaender married Maria Helena Bruhn, a gymnastics teacher. Due to the Nazi occupation restrictions he had to stop his professional activities and hide in the attic of his house in Wassenaar. Between 1940 and 1945 he was totally isolated, communicating only with his wife who, herself not being Jewish, could overtly make a living. In these years he continued to work for the Exilliteratur publishers Querido and Allert de Lange,Exil editions | Koninklijke Bibliotheek and further designed the Hadassah typeface (completed in 1958).