Gustav Wolf was born in 1887. He worked most of his life with publishers as designer, graphic artist, and later as a printer-publisher himself. He had wide interests in varlous media. He did small sculpture, though his central work was ac complished forthe various publishers, such as Diederichs and the Heidelberg printers.
Wolf was a product of the German Werkbund, begun by Friedrich Naumann, Avenarius, Hermann Muthesius, and Diederichs in 1907. In order to raise the standards of modern life, a society of artists, industrialists, designers, and technicians was organized and remained in existence for many years. The major purpose was also to bring some measure of joy and pride in work back to the stagnating worker under the growing lndustrial Revolution in Germany. The Werkbund, unlike the British movement, was not sociatistic but antisocialist.
Eugen Diederichs was the first German publisher to attempt to unify the whole book. From the Werkbund philosophy, Diederichs went back to basic construction out of the best materials, questioned every traditionell method, was an auda clous entrepreneur of his own ideas, and supported the greatest designers of book layout and type design in all the European countries. Diederichs's portfolios were built around the title page, not the cover. He felt that the title page should show its structure and be effective by its beauty. He promoted new typefaces by Ehmcke, Tiemann, Koch, and Behrens.