Walter Trier

Walter Trier was the child of a German-speaking, Jewish-bourgeois family. He studied first in Prague and later in Munich, worked for Simplicissimus, Jugend and Lustige Blätter, among others, and drew for Ullstein Verlag from 1910, including for Berliner Illustrierte. During the First World War he drew a series of propagandistic caricatures against Great Britain and the other members of the Entente for the war editions of the Lustige Blätter, Berlin.

Walter Trier was also a commercial artist, creating caricatures, stage sets and costumes. The children’s playroom on the steamer Bremen was also designed by Walter Trier. In 1919-1920 he published caricatures for the Illustrierte Filmwoche.
Trier, who was already very successful and respected worldwide, became famous for a long time through his illustrations for children’s books by Erich Kästner. In 1929, the publisher Edith Jacobsohn introduced him to Erich Kästner, and so in the same year he became the illustrator of Erich Kästner’s first children’s book Emil und die Detektive and contributed significantly to Kästner’s success as a children’s author. For several years, the two artists shared a close collaboration and friendship.
After the transfer of power to the National Socialists in 1933, the illustrations for Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were his last work on the European mainland, whereupon Walter Trier emigrated to London at the end of 1936, where he illustrated for the satirical magazine Liliput and various political drawings. In collaboration with the Czech cartoonist Adolf Hoffmeister, he published the Jesters in Earnest collection of political cartoons in 1944. He also provided illustrations for children’s books and published his own volumes and playbooks.

After the end of the war, Walter Trier emigrated to his daughter in Canada in 1947, where he continued his work as a commercial artist and as an illustrator for Kästner books. Walt Disney offered him a job as an animator, but Trier turned it down because he didn’t want to work under another company’s logo.

Trier usually signed his works in the lower right corner or in the right part of the picture with his surname in block letters.

Posters by Walter Trier