Adolph Friedländer

Who was Adolph Friedländer?

Adolph Friedländer 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 lithograhy 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 which ran from 1890 to 1901, and then Der Anker 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.