Elizabeth Friedlander

Collecting

I collect the strangest things. I can’t help it. It’s in my blood. My father was also an avid collector. Especially of stamps. If you lined up all the stamps we inherited from him, they would encircle the equator. If you could hold them in the air, one above the other, they would form a skybridge to the moon, probably beyond.

My mother shook her head at all that collecting. She found it a bit odd, I think, but she let people have their own unique quirks - as long as it didn’t get too crazy. In her opinion, the stamps had reached that point.

I challenged her usual tolerance by offering to replace the missing editions of her Penguin Scores booklets. She’d bought them as a young woman in the 1950s so she could follow the scores of her favourite symphonies. I didn’t care much for the music, but I really loved the book covers.

Naturally, I ignored my mother’s response that she really wasn’t interested in any more volumes. Then she shrugged her shoulders when I asked if I could have her collection. “As if you don’t have enough books already,” she replied, and then let me get on with it.

I was already living in England at the time. Every time I picked up a new volume, I sent her a photo. I usually didn’t get a reply, but I could imagine her shrug.

This week I discovered that the covers I loved so much were all designed by Elizabeth Friedländer. Born in Berlin in 1903, she trained as a typographer. Friedländer was Jewish. In 1935, after the Nazis seized power, she moved to Italy. When anti-Semitic laws were passed there in 1938, she left, via the United States, and went to London.

During the war, Friedlander, quickly dropped the umlaut on her ‘a.’ She worked for an organisation that used her typography skills to forge Nazi stamps and reproduce ration book stamps.

After the war, Friedlander produced an extensive amount of work for Penguin, including the Scores editions. I also found some wonderful examples of her work in poetry collections. For the publisher’s 25th anniversary, Friedlander designed a beautiful logo.

A few days ago, as I was looking at the booklets, I discovered two volumes were missing, two symphonies by Beethoven. That’s a job only half done. The missing volumes were promptly ordered.