Hans Jürgen Press

Who was Hans Jürgen Press?

Hans Jürgen Press was a German illustrator and writer of children's books. Many of his books contain stories and puzzles in which the reader searches the illustrations for clues to the mystery.

Press was imprisoned in Algeria, England and the USA during World War II. He moved to Hamburg in 1945 and attended the Hochschule für Bildende Künste. While a prisoner at Ft. D.A. Russell in Texas, he painted detailed murals of far West Texas mountain scenes at Building 98 in Marfa, Texas. The murals are on the National Register of Historic Places because of the work of Mona Blocker Garcia of the international Womans Foundation. He departed Marfa, Texas, in 1945 while there he created two west Texas watercolors of local residents one performing a Spanish dance and another playing the Spanish guitar.

In 1953 he began to illustrate for "sternchen", the children's supplement of German magazine stern. He invented "Der kleine Herr Jakob", a little man with moustache and bowler hat who never talked but whose comic strips were commented in verse.