Adolph Friedländer
| Adolph Friedländer | |
|---|---|
Adolph Friedländer, c. 1895
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| Born |
17 April 1851 Hamburg |
| Died | 7 July 1904 (aged 53) Hamburg |
| Occupation | Lithographer |
Adolph Friedländer (17 April 1851 – 7 July 1904) was a famed German lithographer of posters and a publisher hailing from Hamburg. His printshop produced over 9,000 posters between 1872 and 1935, predominantly for artists, magicians and circus and vaudeville performers. First learning lithography at his father's shop in Hamburg, he received formal training in Berlin and returned to operate independently in 1872. First concentrating on labels for businesses, he turned to poster printing to cater to the many artists and performers which operated nearby to the location of his business.
Friedländer expanded his business to cover manuscript printing and established two magazines. The first was Der Kurier ("The Courier") which ran from 1890 to 1901, and then Der Anker ("The Anchor") which ran from 1902 to 1928. After his death, Friedländer's sons, Otto Max and Ludwig took over operations. The business suffered greatly when World War I broke out because the entertainment industry, the printshop's lifeblood, came to a virtual standstill. Business picked up in the 1920s but in 1928 the Great Depression intervened. After the Nazi regime came into power in 1933, the business, run by a Jewish family but a "Devisenbringer,"—a company that brought in foreign currency—was allowed to continue for a few more years but was finally shut down.
Friedländer was the third and last son of Raphael Israel Friedländer and Betty Friedländer née Wagner. Prior to moving to Hamburg, Friedländer's father worked as a merchant. After the move however, Raphael joined a guild of professional lithographers and opened a small lithography shop. Friedländer first received informal training at his father's shop and in the summer of 1865, went to Berlin for more formal instruction. By 1868, Friedländer was apprenticed to top German lithographers. In 1872 Friedländer returned to Hamburg and began working as an independent printmaker. On 1 April 1875 he married one Sarah Berling, also from Hamburg, under Jewish rites.
After his father died, Friedländer inherited his old lithographic press and set up shop in the St. Pauli quarter of Hamburg. He initially concentrated on label printing for kolonialwaren and delikatesswaren (types of gourmet grocers). Friedländer's shop was located nearby to the Spielbudenplatz, an area of numerous beer halls, vaudeville theaters, music halls and other exhibition spaces. Deciding these presented a better business opportunity, he abandoned label printing and focused instead on selling posters to these businesses utilizing the complex four-color lithographic process he had learned in France. Friedländer breakthrough moment came when he received large orders of posters advertising Carl Hagenbeck's animal shows in 1883 and 1884.
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