Hans Hacker
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Hans Hacker was a ceramic decal designer and painter.
Hacker was born on March 4, 1910 in the village of Waldenburg (now Wałbrzych), Germany. Waldenburg was in the Silesia Province and became part of Poland after World War II. Hacker was one of seven children. His father August was a commercial ceramics artist and his mother, Eliese Moore Hacker, was a kindergarten teacher.
Hacker was showing and selling paintings by the time he was 11 or 12 years old. He graduated from the Breslau Art School in Breslau, Germany.
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[edit] Family
On October 22, 1934, Hacker married Johanna "Hanna" Krause, a daughter of Heinrich and Selma Spatscheck Krause. A native of Hacker's village, she had been born on October 1, 1913. They had three children. Hanna Hacker died January 12, 2008 in Burlington, Vermont at the age of 94.
[edit] Professional career
As an adult, Hacker worked as head designer for E. Wunderlich and Company in Germany. As a representative for Wunderlich, he first visited East Liverpool, Ohio in 1932. He traveled back and forth between Germany and Ohio over the next half dozen years, tending to the growing business relationship between Wunderlich and Commercial Decal.
As the Nazis came to power in Germany in the late 1930s, Hacker and his family sought to leave the country and decided to settle permanently in East Liverpool in 1939. Hacker was hired by Commercial Decal as an art consultant. He was later named art and technical director of Commercial Decal. He retired from Commercial Decal in 1977, although he continued working as a consultant for many years afterward.
Especially via his work in perfecting the slide-off decal method, Hacker became a celebrated decal and ceramic designer. He was the most prolific designer of dinnerware patterns in history.
[edit] Fine artist
In addition to his work in the ceramics industry, Hacker was a painter who exhibited equal skill with oils and watercolors. He painted hundreds of scenes of East Liverpool and the surrounding area—-including many paintings of Little Beaver Creek and the historic community of Fredericktown. He also did numerous paintings of northern West Virginia, just across the Ohio River from East Liverpool. His works are a comprehensive historic and visual record of two centuries of life in the area.
[edit] Accolades and awards
Hacker's work is exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution and the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio. For his contribution to East Liverpool history and culture, Hacker was inducted into the Lou Holtz Upper Ohio Valley Hall of Fame on June 22, 2007. Hacker died on December 27, 1994.
