Hugo Steiner-Prag, Designs for a Machzor
Hugo Steiner-Prag descended from one of the oldest Jewish families in Prague but chose to work and teach as a graphic artist in Germany for over 30 years until he was forced to flee the Nazis in 1934. He returned to Prague and began to create designs for a machzor (prayerbook) in Czech. Jews in Czechoslovakia had been using German-language prayer books left over from the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire which ceased to exist in 1918. The plan for a machzor in Steiner-Prag’s native language never materialized, but the original designs (now in the Leo Baeck collections) were printed in 1963 and have been used in American prayer books.