[2][3] So, after his Abitur Hans studied law in the universities of Bonn, Vienna (Austria), Kiel, and Jena, where he earned his doctorate from in 1915.

[4] He returned to Germany later in 1917, joining the publishing house of Kurt Wolff, first in Leipzig and later in Munich,[2] where he supervised production and edited art books.

[4] He also founded and edited the publisher's short-lived art magazine of only six issues, Genius: Zeitschrift für alte und werdende Kunst,[3][2] together with Carl Georg Heise and Kurt Pinthus from 1919 to 1921.

[1] A test run of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Urworte Orphisch [de] using Bodoni's typeface was finished by December.

[6] After Mardersteig had won a competition to become the printer of a new national edition of the complete works of the Italian poet and war hero Gabriele D'Annunzio, he transferred the ownership of Officina Bodoni to Arnoldo Mondadori in 1926.

[9] Other typefaces designed by him include Dante, Griffo, Zeno, and Pacioli, all for Officina Bodoni,[1] sometimes with the help of French punchcutter Charles Malin [fr].

When northern Italy was controlled by the Nazis in 1945, Mardersteig's press printed 200 copies of sonnets against them written by the German author Rudolf Hagelstange [de] who was stationed with the Wehrmacht in the Veneto region.

[3] The last books made under Giovanni Mardersteig's supervision were the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid's Selected Lyrics and sayings of ancient Greek philosophers under the title The Seven Sages of Greece in Italian and English translation.

[5] Mardersteig's Officina Bodoni work on "small editions, printed with meticulous care on an old-fashioned handpress that occupied a room in his house" earned him considerable international reputation.

Called the "prince of printers", he was considered a "perfectionist and printed exquisite books of the highest typographical standards", which according to Rudolf Hagelstange came as close to ideal as possible.

"[11] Giovanni Mardersteig chose to keep a low profile, but the following can be considered a public statement of his design philosophy: "First, service to the author, searching for the form best suited to his theme.