Nathan Birnbaum was a Jewish writer and journalist who coined the term “Zionism” (1890). Read more about him here.

In 1933, at the time of the Nazi rise to power, Birnbaum fled to the Netherlands.
He died in Scheveningen in 1937 after a period of severe illness.

I wonder what he would have thought about the way his letterhead was put to use.

The title translates to ‘The nail behind the wallpaper’ and refers to the scratching noise of a mouse that has symbolic significance to characters in this book. It took me some time to find out that the signature ‘W’ in the illustration belongs to Nicolaas Wijnberg.

Nicolaas Wijnberg (1918 – 2006) was responsible for all book cover designs of the ‘Witte Olifant’ (white elephant) series of Dutch publisher Van Oorschot. He was prolific in graphic design, illustration, painting, theater related work (posters, costumes and set design) and teaching. He was (amongst others) editor of renowned magazine Tirade (also published by Van Oorschot).

Another book with an illustration by Nicolaas Wijnberg that was in my dad’s library.
(A good read by the way.)

This is one of his theater posters (found at the Dutch Poster Museum website).

Very little work of his is available online, so if you find any, please let me know.

Here’s what I found so far:

• - Set design and costumes by Nicolaas Wijnberg (An article in Dutch about an exhibition)
• - The official Nicolaas Wijnberg site (mostly paintings)

Jaap Proost just let me know he has three posts dedicated to the work of Nicolaas Wijnberg on his blog ‘Beats Nothing’

• - Photos of a mural at the train station in Delft
• - Posters by Nicolaas Wijnberg
• - Covers of Tirade magazine