[5] Between 1924 and 1927 Mohr undertook an apprenticeship as a sign painter with a firm in the city called Ladewig & Co and embarked on a life as a journeyman artist.

Eventually, in 1933/34 he started a course of study at the Unified National Academy for Visual and Applied Arts in Berlin-Charlottenburg, hoping to use the opportunity to find his own "artistic signature".

[3] For the May 1946 Labour Day celebrations he got hold of a large piece of board that had been intended to seal broken window frames and drew on it a face with exaggerated features, accompanied by a casually discarded carnation.

The resulting poster caught the mood of the moment and became, without any drama, his entry ticket for a career as an artist in the Soviet occupation zone (after October 1949 the German Democratic Republic).

[3] Delight in the joy and humour to be found in scenes from everyday life, along with his involvement with craft-based human-scale artistry, did nothing to compromise Mohr's basic commitment to the socialist principals espoused by the East German political class, however.