Hans Alexander Müller

Hans Alexander Müller (born March 12, 1888 in Nordhausen ; † July 7, 1962 in New Milford (Connecticut) (USA)) was a German graphic artist and book illustrator .

Life

Hans Alexander Müller studied from 1907 to 1911 at the Academy for Graphic Arts and Book Industry in Leipzig. From 1920 to 1922 he worked here as a teacher in the woodcut class . Then he received a professorship for woodcut art at the same institution from 1922 to 1933. In 1923 he also became head of the woodcut workshop at the Leipzig Art Academy.

His specialty was book illustration . He worked mainly for Leipzig publishers and equipped numerous works of world literature with drawings in all printmaking techniques, but preferably with wood engravings . His breakthrough came with the illustration of some volumes in the Insel-Bücherei . He illustrated works by Honoré de Balzac , Miguel de Cervantes , Adelbert von Chamisso , Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Robert Louis Stevenson , Jean Paul , Gottfried Keller , Voltaire and Oscar Wilde as well as some Bible editions . He was particularly fond of miniature representations of action-packed scenes. He also mostly created the bindings and dust jackets. Calendars and almanacs were also furnished by him. He worked in the styles typical of the time, from Expressionism to Art Deco .

Since his wife Maria, née Riethof, was Jewish and he refused to join the NSDAP , his contract at the woodcut workshop of the Leipzig Academy was not extended in 1937. That is why the couple did not return to Germany from a trip to New York, where Müller's friends Rudolf Max Littauer and von Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt had organized an exhibition of his works. His book with woodcuts from New York was published as early as 1938. From 1938 to 1958 he taught graphic techniques in the "Department of Adult Education" at Columbia University in New York in German.

In 1944 Müller received American citizenship. Due to a lack of language skills, he lived in New York socially and artistically isolated. As an illustrator he was only moderately successful, which is why he earned his main income from teaching.

Fonts

• Woodcuts of New York . JJ Augustin Publisher NY 1938
• How I Make Woodcuts and Wood Engravings . New York 1945

literature

• Horst Riedel: Stadtlexikon Leipzig from A to Z . PRO LEIPZIG, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-936508-03-8 , p. 417
• Uli Eichhorn, Ronald Salter: Hans Alexander Müller: The book art work Burgart-Presse, Rudolstadt 1997, ISBN 3-910206-22-0
• Otto Bettmann: The wood cutter and book illustrator Hans Alexander Müller, Leipzig (= Philobiblon. A magazine for book lovers. Vol. 9, No. 4, 1936, supplement). Reichner, Vienna et al. 1936.
• Helmut Bähring, Kurt Rüddiger (Hrsg.): Lexicon Buchstadt Leipzig. From the beginning until 1990 . Tauchaer Verlag 2008. ISBN 978-3-89772-147-0 , p. 184

Web links

• Leipzig Lexicon
• Exile archive
• The Visual Telling of Stories with illustration examples and a self-portrait