Ernst H. Kellner

Biography

Born 1899. Student of Rudolf Koch in early 1920s then went to Leipzig as editor at Insel Verlag; he eventually became managing director of the famed printing firm Haag-Drugulin. He revived the Drugulin-Drucke, which in its job printing produced many fine treasures, and founded the new workshop Drugulin-Presse in 1936 with his Klingspor friend Fritz Arnold as master pressman. But the Press produced only one major work (Plato’s Phaidro) before the war started. Killed in a bombing raid on 4 December 1943 while on home leave from the army in which he was a staff officer. The raid (of 800 planes) also destroyed much of Leipzig’s ‘printing quarter’, the remainder of which was totally destroyed in a later raid of 27 February 1945.

Writings by

  • ‘Die Drugulin-Presse in Leipzig’, Imprimatur, 1936/7, pp. 145-7
  • ‘Die Aufgaben der Buchherstellung im modernen Verlag’ in Leipzigs Wirken am Buch, Leipzig: 1927, pp. 38-44 (published on the occasion of the International Book Art Exhibition)
  • ‘Afterword’ in Rudolf Koch, Häusliches Leben, Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1934
    • ‘Gott grüss die Kunst!’ ( on Karl Klingspor’s 70th birthday), Philobiblon, v. 6, 1938, pp. 262-3
  • Schrift und Buch. Eine Fibel (with Eberhard Schmieder), Leipzig: L. Staackman, 1939
  • Kleine Stilgeschichte unserer gebräuchlichsten Druckschriften, Leipzig: Offizin Haag-Drugulin, 1939 (reprint from EK’s Schrift und Buch, 1939).
  • ‘Erinnerungen an Offenbach’, Archiv für Buchgewerbe und Gebrauchsgraphik, Leipzig: Deutsche Buchgewerbeverein., Nov./Dec. 1933, pp. 372-82, and back cover (EK was also the editor and designer of this special no.: ‘Rudolf Koch und sein Kreis’)

Writings about

  • note on Offizin Haag-Drugulin, Buch- und Werbekunst, Sept. 1930, pp. 328-9
    • ‘Nachrichten’, Philobiblon, v. 1, 1938, p. 3
  • Wilhelm H. Lange, ‘Jahresschau für den Bücherfreund’, Imprimatur, 1939/40, p. 181
    • Georg Kurt Schauer, ‘Die Drugulin-Presse in Leipzig’, Philobiblon 12, 1940, pp. 46-51
  • Hans Kupfer, Über Kunst und Künstler, Leipzig: Offizin Haag-Drugulin, 1951
  • GKS, 1963, pp. 196-8
  • Georg Kurt Schauer, ‘The Art of the Book in Germany…’, in Book Typography 1815-1965, (Kenneth Day, ed.)., London: Ernest Benn Ltd, 1966
  • GKS, 1978
    • Theo Neteler, ‘Zur Geschichte der Offizin Drugulin’, Aus dem Antiquariat, insert in Börsenblatt, Frankfurt a.M., no. 8, 29 Jan. 1988
  • T. Neteler, ‘Die Offizinen W. Drugulin und Haag-Drugulin’, Philobiblon, March 1992, pp. 27-52
  • Walter Bergner, ‘Ein Fundus Leipziger Buchkultur. Zur Geschichte des Letternschatzes der Offizin Haag-Drugulin’, Leipziger Jahrbuch zur Buchgeschichte, 1993, pp. 257-74
  • ‘Typographische Kultur der Gegenwart in Schriftenkatalogen deutscher Druckereien’ (Offizin Haag-Drugulin), Archiv für Buchgewerbe und Gebrauchsgraphik, Leipzig: Deutsche Buchgewerbeverein., June 1932, p. 274 and 2-page supplement
  • Gebrauchsgraphik (International Advertising Art), Berlin: Phönix Illustrationsdruck und Verlag GmbH (later: ‘Gebrauchsgraphik’ Druck und Verlag GmbH), 1933-71. Published from Munich from 1950., Aug. 1932, p. 69 (review of Anwendungsproben der schönsten Drugulin-Schriften, Leipzig: Offizin Haag-Drugulin, 1932)
    • Walter Bergner, ‘Die Offizin Haag-Drugulin in Leipzig’, Marginalien, 1993, no. 131, pp. 3-33
  • GC, 2000.