Fritz Kredel was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 graphic designer

Graphic designer

A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, printed or electronic media, such as brochures and...

 who was born in Michelstadt-im-Odenwald

Michelstadt

Michelstadt in the Odenwald is a town in the Odenwaldkreis in southern Hesse, Germany between Darmstadt and Heidelberg.- Location :Michelstadt is the biggest town in the Odenwaldkreis and borders on the district seat of Erbach....

. In his early years, he studied under Rudolf Koch

Rudolf Koch

thumb|250px|[[Fraktur]] fonts by Rudolf KochRudolf Koch was a leading German calligrapher, typographic artist and teacher, born in Nuremberg. He was primarily a calligrapher with the Gebr. Klingspor foundry. He created several typefaces, in both fraktur and roman styles...

 at Offenbach School of Design, and developed skills in woodcut

Woodcut

Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...

s. Koch and Kredel collaborated on A Book of Signs (1923) and The Book of Flowers (1930). Following Koch's death in 1934, Kredel moved to Frankfurt

Frankfurt

Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

, but, in 1936, fled Germany (for political reasons relating to his Jewish ancestry) with help from Melbert Cary

Melbert Cary

Melbert Brinckerhoff Cary Jr. was a graphic artist who imported numerous typefaces from Europe. He married Mary Flagler Cary, an heiress of one of the founders of Standard Oil...

. After emigrating to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 in 1938, he taught at Cooper Union

Cooper Union

The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly referred to simply as Cooper Union, is a privately funded college in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States, located at Cooper Square and Astor Place...

 in New York. He produced illustrations for over 400 books and received many awards and honors. Many of his originals are now housed at the library at Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

.

Kredel illustrated Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...

's children's book, Christmas, and was commissioned to create a woodcut

Woodcut

Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...

 of the Presidential Seal

Seal of the President of the United States

The Seal of the President of the United States is used to mark correspondence from the U.S. president to the United States Congress, and is also used as a symbol of the presidency. The central design, based on the Great Seal of the United States, is the official coat of arms of the U.S...

 for the inauguration of John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

. He illustrated several volumes for George Macy's Limited Edition Club, and World's Best Fairy Tales for Reader's Digest in the late 1960s. Kredel colored the John Tenniel

John Tenniel

Sir John Tenniel was a British illustrator, graphic humorist and political cartoonist whose work was prominent during the second half of England’s 19th century. Tenniel is considered important to the study of that period’s social, literary, and art histories...

 illustrations for Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...

's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...

and Through the Looking-Glass

Through the Looking-Glass

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There is a work of literature by Lewis Carroll . It is the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland...

for the 1946 Random House

Random House

Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...

editions, and illustrated The Complete Andersen: All of the Stories of Hans Christian Andersen in Six Volumes, a limited edition of 1500 sets. He signed the sixth volume of each numbered set. The illustrations purportedly were hand-colored by stencil.