Willy Fleckhaus

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Wilhelm August "Willy" Fleckhaus (born December 21, 1925 in Velbert , † September 12, 1983 in Castelfranco di Sopra , Italy ) was a German designer and journalist. The book and magazine designer was a professor of visual communication in Essen and Wuppertal and was one of the most important German graphic designers between 1950 and 1983.

Life

Fleckhaus spent his childhood and youth in Velbert near Düsseldorf. There he was active in the Catholic youth movement. He was a soldier between 1943 and 1945 and was taken prisoner of war in northern Italy towards the end of the Second World War.

From 1946 Fleckhaus first worked at the Niederberg Art Association and from 1948 as an editor at the Fährmann magazine of the Christophorus Verlag in Freiburg im Breisgau . In 1950 he switched to the Bund-Verlag as an editor and worked for the union youth magazine Aufwärts , whose creative direction he took over from 1953. Consulting assignments followed, including for the Cologne publishing house DuMont-Schauberg . In 1956, Fleckhaus created the new concept for the Photokina exhibition catalog and the exhibition design for the fair. Fleckhaus worked for the Photokina for the next twenty years.

In 1959 he moved within Bund-Verlag from Aufwärts to the trade union weekly newspaper of the German trade union federation Welt der Arbeit . In 1959, after his work as a consultant for a publication by the Federal Press Office on the subject of the Bundeswehr caused offense at his employer, Fleckhaus left the Bund-Verlag at his own request. Shortly afterwards he founded the magazine twen with Adolf Theobald and Stephan Wolf , which was discontinued in May 1971 after 129 issues.

Fleckhaus' best-known works include his designs for the book series of Suhrkamp Verlag Bibliothek Suhrkamp (1959), Edition Suhrkamp (1962) and Suhrkamp Taschenbuch as well as for the paperbacks of Insel Verlag . It was not until 2004 that Suhrkamp Verlag changed the title design and typography of the Edition Suhrkamp and the Suhrkamp paperback . Also in 1959 he designed the style-defining magazine twen together with Heinz Edelmann , of which he was the artistic director . He was also responsible for the design of the magazine for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . The logos of the Quick magazine , the Ein Herz für Kinder campaign and the WDR were also designed by Fleckhaus.

In 1972 and 1973, Fleckhaus was President of the German Art Directors Club . Until his death he taught typography in the communication design department at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal .

Since 2019, Carsten Wolff has been working with the support of the Fleckhaus family on an archive with documents, works and personal items of the great designer that is accessible to research and the public. It will probably be presented for the first time in 2020 and will be continuously expanded and expanded in the following years.

Work (selection)

Volume 1 of the iconic Fleckhaus titles in the Suhrkamp edition

The two images below show the only stamp pads designed by Fleckhaus .

  • Christmas stamp from the German Federal Post Office (1978)

  • Christmas stamp from the Deutsche Bundespost Berlin (1978)

honors and awards

Special exhibitions

literature

  • Fleckhaus - design, revolt, rainbow . Edited by Hans-Michael Koetzle, Carsten Wolff , Michael Buhrs, Petra Hesse, Hartmann Books, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-96070-012-8 .
  • twen - revision of a legend. Edited by Hans-Michael Koetzle, Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1995, ISBN 978-3781403925
  • Michael Koetzle, Carsten M. Wolff (eds.): Fleckhaus . Germany's first art director. Klinkhardt & Biermann, 2000, ISBN 3-7814-0405-6 .
  • Mathieu Lommen, The Book of the Most Beautiful Books . Dumont, 2012, ISBN 3-8321-9378-2 , pp. 390, 391.
  • Siegfried Unseld : The Marienbad basket. About the book design at Suhrkamp-Verlag: Willy Fleckhaus zu Ehren. (= Annual gift 1976 for the members of the Maximilian Society ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Koetzle, Carsten M. Wolff (Ed.): Fleckhaus . Germany's first art director. Klinkhardt & Biermann, 2000, ISBN 3-7814-0405-6 , pp. 208, 209 .
  2. ^ Museum Villa Stuck: Willy Fleckhaus. Design, revolt, rainbow
personal data
SURNAME Fleckhaus, Willy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fleckhaus, Wilhelm August (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German designer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Velbert
DATE OF DEATH September 12, 1983
Place of death Castelfranco di Sopra