George Salter

George Salter ( born Georg Salter, born October 5, 1897 in Bremen, † October 31, 1967 in New York ) was a German First, since 1940, an American commercial artist and stage designer. He revolutionized the cover design for books. World famous was his design to Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz.

Life

Salter was born as a child of a Hamburg musician. The parents were converts to the Protestant faith in his year of birth from Judaism. With his parents and three siblings, he moved to Berlin. In 1913 he was confirmed in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, and laid 1916 Abitur at the Werner - Siemens Real Gymnasium in Berlin -Schöneberg from.

After military service in World War I, he studied at the art school in Berlin- Charlottenburg. In 1921, he was stage designer at the Prussian State Opera, moved in 1923 to the Berlin Volksoper and in 1925 to the United Stadttheater Barmen- Elberfeld, where he designed some 100 stage sets.

In 1927 he returned to Berlin and worked as a principal artist for the publishing house, the blacksmith, whose editions he gave a distinctive, elegant appearance soon. After the bankruptcy of this ambitious company he designed for a total of 33 publishers until 1934, around 350 covers, including the Wrapper on Alfred Döblin 's Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929 ), Ernst Toller's the Fires (1930) and Peter de Mendelssohn Paris over me ( 1931). In 1931 he became head of the Commercial Graphics for Graphics of the school in Berlin, a position which he had to retire in 1933 after the seizure of power by the National Socialists.

Salter moved to Baden -Baden. In November 1934, he emigrated to the U.S. and settled in New York City, where he immediately began after his arrival, to make book covers for U.S. publishers. He designed, inter alia, the envelopes for Carl Zuckmayers The Moons Ride Over ( 1937) and William Shirer's Berlin Diary ( 1941). In 1939 he took over the management of the graphics department of Mercury Publications and designed in the following decade 185 book covers and about 30 journal titles.

In 1937 he was appointed lecturer at New York's Cooper Union School of Art, he taught there until his death in typography and calligraphy. In 1940 he became an American citizen.

Salter was married to Agnes O'Shea and had a daughter, Janet.