Albrecht Dürer
Media theoretician of the 16th century1471-1528Albrecht Dürer, born into a family of goldsmiths and a citizen of Nuremberg often described as the greatest German artist of all time, began an apprenticeship with the painter Michael Wolgemut in 1486 at his own urging. It was in his workshop that many of the woodcuts for the Schedelsche Weltchronik were completed. Periods of stay in Alsace and Basel as well as a journey to Venice preceded the founding of his own workshop in his home town.
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Relentless critic of modern media operations*1929From the 1950s onwards, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, who came to prominence as a poet, also made a name for himself as a left-leaning critic of the conservative Adenauer republic. It was not only literary publications such as verteidigung der wölfe (Defending the Wolves) from 1957, but also his wide-ranging journalism that had a significant influence on intellectual and art theory debate.
Carl Faulmann
A pioneer in the study of writing in the 19th century1835-1894Carl Faulmann was born in Halle an der Saale in 1835 and initially trained to be a typesetter. A subsequent phase of extensive travels led him to Munich, where in 1854 he saw shorthand types from the Royal Court and State Printers in Vienna. Harry C. Gammeter
Inventor of the Multigraph machine1870-1937Harry C. Gammeter first of all worked for a typewriter company in Kentucky. In around 1900 he constructed the prototype for a machine that generated reproductions using a rotary drum. This meant that circular letters or invoices could be generated without having to always write them from scratch.
Claude Garamond
Type founder at the King’s order1499-1561Most likely born in 1499 in Paris, Claude Garamond began an apprenticeship as a book printer in 1510 in the workshop of the humanist, engraver and typographer Antoine Augereau. His first typographical works probably date back to the beginning of the 1530s, a notable example being the so-called Cicero typeface which was re-cut by his countryman Jean Jannon in 1620 and distributed under the name Garamond.
Ludwig Goller
The father of German number plates1884-1964After an apprenticeship as a precision mechanic and studies in engineering, the Hamburg native Ludwig Goller pursued a professional career in the service of Berlin’s municipal power utilities company the Berliner Elektrizitätswerke. After periods of employment for the German electrical equipment producer AEG and the optics manufacturer Carl Zeiss, Goller arrived at Siemens’ Berlin branch in 1920, where he was tasked with setting up a central standards office. He retained the position until his retirement in 1945.
Georg Friedrich Grotefend
Decipherer of unknown worlds of script1775-1853The grammar school teacher Georg Friedrich Grotefend was a highly-enthusiastic solver of riddles. In his search for a “universal writing system” he succeeded, in 1802, in deciphering 13 characters of the Persian cuneiform script which up to that point had not been understood for centuries.
Johannes Gutenberg
An inventor with many facesum 1400-1468As the inventor of the technique of printing with moveable type, Johannes Gutenberg is a global historical figure of immense importance but, at the same time, a person about whom little is known.
Wilhelm Hauff
More than a teller of fairy tales 1802-1827Born as the son of a civil service clerk, Wilhelm Hauff studied theology in Tübingen from 1820 to 1824 and then became a tutor in the household of Baron von Hügel, the war council president from Wurttemberg. His literary output began at this time with the Märchen-Almanach auf das Jahr 1826 für Söhne und Töchter gebildeter Stände (Fairytale Almanac for the year 1826 for the Sons and Daughters of the Educated Classes), published in 1825.
Heinrich Heine
Satire against censorship1797-1856Heinrich Heine’s criticism of Germany’s political culture attracted the attention of the country’s literary censors who banned many of his works. His encounters with the authorities who tried to silence him were, however, artistically productive in terms of the satirical work he produced as a response.
