Max Thalmann

Biography

Book design, type design, logos, woodcuts. Born 13 August 1890 in Thüringen. Studied at the Weimar Kunstgewerbeschule: a teacher was Walther Klemm. Later studied at the Leipzig Akademie and the Weimar Hochschule für bildenden Künste, followed by freelance work. He started illustrating for the publisher Eugen Diederichs and from 1920 was in charge of book production there. 1923-4: visited USA, resulting in his print cycle Amerika in Holzschnitt . Diederichs published two books of his woodcuts: Der Dom and Amerika in Holzschnitt. c1930: designed Diederichs’s gravestone. 1939: designed a typeface. 1944: died in Weimar

Writings about

  • Vollmer, 1958 (bibliography)
  • Benezit, 2006.
  • W.G. Oschilewski, ‘Eugen Diederichs. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der neuen Deutschen Buchkunst’, Imprimatur, 1939/40, pp. 17-32 plus 4-p. inset
  • Curt Tillmann, ‘Die Entwicklung des Buchumschlages’ ( bookjackets ), Imprimatur, 1939/40, pp. 145-59
  • W.G. Oschilewski, ‘Max Thalmann’, Imprimatur, 1939/40, pp. 179-80
  • W.G.O. [Oschilewski], ‘Max Thalmann und sein buchgewerbliches Schaffen’, Deutscher Drucker, Oct. 1940, p. 21
  • Walther G. Oschilewski, ‘Eugen Diederichs and the German Book Art’, Archiv für Buchgewerbe und Gebrauchsgraphik, Leipzig: Deutsche Buchgewerbeverein., 1936, pp. 399-416, esp. pp. 408, 414, 415, 416 (and 3 unnumb. pp.)
  • Archiv für Buchgewerbe und Gebrauchsgraphik, Leipzig: Deutsche Buchgewerbeverein., 1941, pp. 155-78
  • W.G. Oschilewski, ‘Publisher’s signet [logos]of Eugen Diederichs’, Archiv für Buchgewerbe und Gebrauchsgraphik, Leipzig: Deutsche Buchgewerbeverein., 1936, pp. 417-19, esp. p. 419 (logo)