Klaus: A Memoir

Klaus Krippendorff (1932-2022) was a pioneering academic in the fields of content analysis, cybernetics, and design. Perhaps best known for his namesake, Krippendorff’s Alpha, this actually represents only a small part of the work he advanced throughout his long and distinguished career. In his memoirs, Klaus takes us from his childhood in 1930s Germany to his studies at the avant-garde Ulm School of Design to his career at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. In doing so he also shares the non-academic formative moments that shaped him, such as living in post-war East Germany and his family’s journey to escape Soviet rule. The intersection of Klaus’s life with the many historical events of the twentieth century reminds us all of how much of a difference just one person can make.