Hannes Jähn

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Johannes Eberhard Hermann "Hannes" Jähn (born April 28, 1934 in Leipzig ; † July 25, 1987 in Cologne ) was a German sign painter , graphic designer , illustrator , book designer , photo artist and university professor .

Live and act

Hannes Jähn was the son of the study Council Johannes Ferdinand Jähn and its as a housekeeper born-working wife Margaret in 1934 in Leipzig. Between 1940 and 1949 he attended elementary and high school in his hometown. Then he was trained as a sign painter in the Hans Patze workshop until 1952. He showed a special interest in fonts and extraordinary design skills, so that he was awarded the Stalin certificate as the “fastest sign painter in Leipzig”. From 1952 to 1955 he attended the Cologne factory schools and was taught graphic design by Anton Wolff and illustration by Marianne Richter.

After completing his training, he began to work as a freelance graphic and book designer. In the first three years until 1958 he received orders for the design of book covers from the Cologne publisher Joseph Caspar Witsch for Kiepenheuer & Witsch publications and the publishers Harald Ebner from Karl Rauch Verlag in Düsseldorf and Max Niedermayer from Wiesbaden Limes Verlag . Using the photo collage technique and innovative typographic design, he helped shape the image of the book cover, which was modern at the time. Jähn worked for 49 publishing houses in the course of his life, including well-known ones such as S. Fischer , Hanser , Kindler , Luchterhand , Piper , Rowohlt , Suhrkamp and Ullstein .

He received his first awards as early as 1960, which - including foreign awards - was followed by over 100, many of them in the form of medals, for book covers and book decorations. Jähn lived briefly in Worpswede and Paris , in 1961 he moved to Cologne. After two divorced marriages with female artists, he lived there from 1967 with the antiquarian Gundel Gelbert. In 1968 he published the photo book 55 Scarecrows , consisting of his own black and white photographs , at DuMont Schauberg . In the autumn of 1972 he designed the exhibition section “Writing in the Environment” within the “World from Language” project at the Berlin Academy of the Arts . In the same year he founded the Chihuahua-Press together with the art bookseller and publisher Walther König . The first publication Shel Siverstein Rhinozeros to sell cheaply was recognized by the Book Art Foundation in 1973 as one of the 50 most beautiful books. Then Wo ist Martha Schwertlein appeared , a third book was only announced. In 1974 Jähn's artistic expansion to fabric pictures and free painting fell. His pictures were shown publicly in November 1979 in the Cologne gallery Rudolf Zwirner . In 1981 he conceptualized and designed the exhibitions Western Art and Rush and Reality for Cologne museums . Jähn also renewed the graphic design of the posters for the opera and the theater at his place of residence, which resulted in further orders for the Münchner Kammerspiele and the Thalia Theater in Hamburg in 1984/85 . In 1983 Jähn joined the publishing house Zweiausendeins , for which he had been working since 1975, as art director . Two years later he was appointed professor of graphic design in the visual communication department at the Wuppertal University .

Hannes Jähn died of a heart attack on July 25, 1987 .

style

The proven connoisseur of typeface history surprised time and again with new typographies . His method of using photographs in such a way that - converted into "graphic surfaces" - "no longer looked like photographs, but rather like newly formed images" is considered remarkable. In addition, there was an intense, but also subtle, color scheme that affects the viewer. With the cover designs of the paperback series pocket the Kiepenheuer - & - Witsch publishing house turned Jähn literally as an experimental emotions promoter before.

Book chapters by and about Jähn (selection)

  • Adalbert Dickhut : Ten minutes with Adalbert Dickhut. Limpert, Frankfurt am Main 1959. ( Caricatures by Jähn.)
  • 55 scarecrows. DuMont Schauberg, Cologne 1968. (Full-page photographs by Jähn.)
  • The Works of / The work of José Guadalupe Posada . Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main, 1976. (Editing and preface by Jähn; 2nd edition 1978, 3rd edition 1997.)
  • Gundel Gelbert (Ed.): Books, letters, pictures. Hannes Jähn 1934–1987. DuMont / Buchhandlung Walther König / Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1990, ISBN 3-7701-2763-3 . (Catalog with 300 partly colored illustrations for the exhibition in the Museum of Applied Arts Cologne .)
  • Klaus Detjen: Outside Worlds. On the design language of book covers. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-8353-3225-6 , pp. 38–45. (Short biography and work characteristics of Jähns.)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Jähn, Hannes. In: nrw.de. Retrieved March 30, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Redaktionsbüro Harenberg: Knaurs Prominentenlexikon 1980. The personal data of celebrities from politics, economy, culture and society . With over 400 photos. Droemer Knaur, Munich / Zurich 1979, ISBN 3-426-07604-7 , Jähn, Hannes, p. 201 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Celebrities from the Rhineland. Cologne celebrities: Hannes Jähn (1934–1987). In: cologne-info.de. Gerda Krapohl, Wolfgang Krapohl, accessed March 30, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Klaus Detjen: Outside Worlds. On the design language of book covers . Ed .: Klaus Detjen (=  aesthetics of the book . Volume 9 ). Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-8353-3225-6 , Photograph: Hannes Jähn, p. 38-45 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Jähn, Hannes
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jähn, Johannes Eberhard Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sign painter, graphic designer, illustrator, book designer, photo artist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH April 28, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH July 25, 1987
Place of death Cologne