Klaus Staeck

Klaus Staeck (born 28 February 1938 in Pulsnitz) is a German lawyer and publisher who is best known in Germany for his political graphic design work.

Staeck began to teach himself how to work as a graphic designer while pursuing his legal studies, creating posters, postcards, and flyers.

In his campaigns he employed claims such as, e.g., Deutsche Arbeiter – die SPD will euch eure Villen im Tessin wegnehmen ("German workers: the SPD seeks to take away your villas in Tessin from you"), or Die Reichen müssen noch reicher werden – deshalb CDU ("The rich must become richer yet, therefore vote CDU").

He worked together with other political artists and writers, most notably Joseph Beuys,[3] Panamarenko, Dieter Roth, Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Daniel Spoerri, Günter Grass,[3] Walter Jens, and Heinrich Böll[3] who publicly spoke out in his favour.

A recent dissertation thesis reviewing the cases brought against Staeck between 1972 and 1999 from research conducted in his own archive concludes that his approach to appear in court and to bring in the media was a concept that "in the end may have proved successful".