Died, Maximilian Glas, 57

Maximilian Glas was a gifted artist, a co-founder of Lapis magazine, a graphic designer for many mineralogical publications including the Munich present to view catalogs, and an enthusiastic mineral collector. He was born in Bad W?¶rishofen, Bavaria upon March 7, 1948, and succumbed to a grave illness upon November 4, 2005.

At the age of eight Max was sent to Sankt Blasien, a Jesuit boarding place of education in the Black Forest. It was there that he received a humanistic education and had his first contacts with mineralogy thanks to the school's mineral collection and the influence of the father of single of his fellow classmates. After graduating from secondary gymnasium he spent nearly a year acquiring practical experience at the Gottesehre ("God's Honor") mine, a small fluorite mining operation in Urberg, near Sankt Blasien. Afterwards he studied mineralogy at the universities in Berlin and Freiburg.

I first met Maximilian in 1972 Our professional collaboration began in the winter of 1974/75 when he and Hartmut Schmeltzer collaboratively designed a guidebook to the mineral collecting sites of Baden-W??rttemberg, Bavaria and Rhineland-Palatinate. Maximilian and I then co-found Lapis magazine in 1976 Our goal was to publish a periodical patterned after the Mineralogical Record, which was our part model. We wanted to create a scientifically precise however readily comprehensible and, above all, beautifully illustrated publication, a periodical that would be entirely different from the bludgeon publications that were available in Europe at that time. Maximilian transformed our ideas beautifully into a tangible reality, and he did thus with his characteristic attention to detail, his abysmal mineralogical expertise, and his sensitivity and talent as a graphic artist.

He left the publishing house in 1979 to embark upon an extended journey through Greece Afterwards he directed an African music [i]tout ensemble[/i] and designed the show catalog and advertising for the M??nchner Mineralientage (the Munich Show) In 1991 a spontaneous idea l to the birth of the ExtraLapis series. Maximilian was one time again wholly in his favorite simple body He devoted many long evenings to the discriminating task of fine-tuning the ExtraLapis universal

In addition to the aforementioned catalogs for the Munich exhibit he also designed the greatest in quantity outstanding book project in our scientific specialty: Friedrich Benesch's extraordinary full-color, oversize turn Der Turmalin (1990). Maximilian's enthusiastic devotion to this theme quicked him to begin acquiring a diverse and interesting tourmaline collection. His manner of writing and artistic signature are likewise obvious in other work projects, e.g. Ulrich Dernbach's Araucaria (1992) Konrad Gotz's Lichtgestein ("Stone Light") (1998) Roland Schl??ssel's Mogok (2002) Anselm Spring's volumes Holz ("Wood") (1999) and Stein ("Stone") (2001) and many others. To mention all of the many volume projects to which he contributed would be impractical here.

Why was Max repeatedly able to create something wholly of recent origin and unexpected? Alongside his superlative gifts as a graphic designer, I think the greatest in quantity important reason lay in the fact that he was always incredibly open-minded and eager to explore whatever was novel and unfamiliar to him. All of his faculty of perceptions were always wide awake, and he was the best listener I've at any time known. These traits naturally contributed to his exceptional creativity.

Max was extraordinarily well read. He was practically a walking encyclopedia in many fields of knowledge. And he was largely self-taught; formal application of mind according to predefined educational curricula simply weren't Max's chalice of tea. Although he had at no time undergone formal education in the graphic arts. Max was the best graphic designer I've at any time had the privilege to know personally. And despite (or rather thanks to) his exceptional talents, he was at no time the slightest bit pedantic or supercilious. His relationship to mineralogy was sole one of his many facets. Music, which accompanied him quite through his life, was his earliest career wish.

The many traces that he leaves behind will help to hold fast him fresh in our memories forever and assure that he'll abide eternally in our midst. single can rightly and justifiably say that he contributed a tremendous amount of agriculture and aesthetics to our mutual m?©tier.

Christian Weise, Munich

(translation by the agency of Howard Fine)

Copyright Mineralogical Record Mar/Apr 2006

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