Marie Neurath

Marie Neurath, born Marie Reidemeister (27 May 1898 – 10 October 1986), was a German designer, social scientist and author. Neurath was a member of the team that developed a simplified pictographic language, the Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics (Wiener Methode der Bildstatistik), which she later renamed Isotype. She was also a prolific writer and designer of educational books for younger readers.

Biography Marie Reidemeister was born in Braunschweig, Germany on 27 May 1898. Reidemeister studied mathematics and physics from 1917 to 1924 in Göttingen, Germany, while also taking courses at the "Kunstschule" (art school) in 1919.

The other essential member of the Neurath group, the German artist Gerd Arntz, joined in 1928. Marie Reidemeister worked at this museum in Vienna until the brief civil war in Austria in 1934, moving then with Neurath (a prominent Social Democrat) and Arntz (who had allegiances to radical-left groups) to The Hague. An ISOTYPE book on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. A new name was needed for the Vienna Method now that its original context was left behind: Marie Neurath developed the acronym Isotype (International System of Typographic Picture Education) in 1935 on the analogy of Charles Kay Ogden's "Basic English". It was intended as a method of pictorial statistics that could clarify scientific relationships for non specialists. Large data volumes were translated in a comprehensible and memorable visual form. The data was illustrated and interconnections were to be presented, the result was a promoted democratisation of knowledge. Neurath collected the information, Arntz developed the pictograms and graphics and Reidemeister converted the information and data into a visual understandable presentation. She linked technical experts and graphic designers as well as the target audience. Otto Neurath called this position the "trustee of the public".

In 1940, as the German army invaded the Netherlands, Reidemeister escaped with Neurath to England, while Arntz stayed behind in The Hague. In 1941, after release from internment (as "enemy aliens"), Marie and Otto Neurath were married, After Otto Neurath’s death in 1945, Marie Neurath carried on the work with a small number of English assistants, moving to London in 1948.

With ISOTYPE in West Africa In August 1953 Obafemi Awolowo visited London to attend a constitutional conference organised by the British Government. The conference was concerned with discussions concerning the Lyttleton Constitution. While in London, Awolowo arranged to meet Marie Neurath in relation to a proposed contract for educational material to help voters in Western Region, Nigeria better understand the proposed form of governance.

Retirement After her retirement in 1971, she gave the working material of the Isotype Institute to the University of Reading, where it is housed in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication as the Otto and Marie Neurath Isotype Collection. Thereafter she devoted much energy to establishing a record of Otto Neurath’s life and work, and editing and translating his writings. She died in London in 1986.