Henri Friedlaender

Henri Friedlaender was born in 1904 in Lyon

Friedlaender was born in Lyon, France, in 1904. His father was a German-Jewish silk merchant and his mother was British. His sister was the ceramic artist Marguerite Wildenhain, and the family moved to Berlin when he was a child.

In Berlin he attended the Mommsen-Gymnasium. In 1925 he moved to Leipzig to study calligraphy and printing at the Leipzig Academy of Graphic Arts. He then worked at several German printing houses and type foundries.

In 1930 he began work on the Hebrew typeface Hadassah. In 1932 he moved to the Netherlands and became art director of a printing firm in The Hague. During the Nazi occupation he hid in the attic of his home in Wassenaar, where he kept designing books and the Hadassah typeface.

In 1950 he immigrated to Israel with his wife Maria and their daughter and settled in Motza Illit. He headed the Hadassah printing school in Jerusalem, which trained young people and also worked as a print shop, and he taught at Bezalel. The Hadassah typeface was completed in 1958.

After retiring in 1970 he kept working as a designer and teacher. He designed the Hebrew typefaces Shalom, Hadar and Aviv for the IBM Selectric typewriter. He died in 1996.