Hans Bohn
(Oberlahnstein 1891 - 1980 Frankfurt am Main)
Berlin Police Officer (1913)
Oil on cardboard
25 x 18,5 cm
signed and dated upper left and right “Bohn 1913”
framed
Hans Bohn was a German typographer, graphic artist and teacher. He grew up in Bonn, studied at the Offenbach Technical College (now HfG Offenbach) and was a student of Rudolf Koch and Franz Franke. From 1913 to 1914, before his military service, he worked for the Ullstein publishing house in Berlin. In 1919 he married the Jewish woman Helene Bohn (*1891), who was also a painter and graphic artist. In 1921 a son (baptized Protestant) was born.
From 1919 to 1930 Bohn worked for Gebr. Klingspor in Offenbach as a type designer and graphic artist, then he was a freelance graphic artist until 1944 and worked for Ludwig & Mayer and D. Stempel AG. In 1937 he was banned from working by the Chamber of Culture because of his marriage to a Jewish woman. His wife was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where she died.
After his military service, he taught as a professor at the Offenbach School of Applied Arts (now HfG Offenbach) in the typeface class from 1946 to 1956. Franz Erhard Walther was one of his students. Bohn designed books and book covers for numerous German publishers, including Rowohlt (Hamburg), Schneekluth (Darmstadt), Ullstein (Berlin) and S. Fischer (Frankfurt am Main).
