Hans Schmoller

[1][2][3] During his Penguin years he played a crucial role in postwar British typography, and has been described as one of the most influential typographers of the last century.

[4][5] His father, Hans, was a paediatrician and his mother Marie owned a small business making and selling folded paper lampshades.

He excelled in athletics as a child and in 1933 attempted to study art history at university, but was prohibited owing to his Jewish descent.

He studied fine typography during the day at the Staatliche Kunstbibliothek and in evenings with Johannes Boehland at the Höhere Graphische Fachschule.

His father died of a heart attack in the Theresienstadt Ghetto soon after arrival, and his mother was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944.