August Andreas Dietz (19 October 1869–26 September 1963), printer and philatelist, was born in Windecken, a small town near Frankfurt am Main in the area of Prussia that later became part of Germany. He was the son of Peter Dietz, a soap maker, and his second wife, Katharina Maria Hinkel Dietz. Late in June 1871 he and his mother arrived in the United States to join his father, who had immigrated to Louisville, Kentucky, in order to join a family soap- and candle-making business. After a conflagration destroyed the Louisville enterprise, the family settled in Richmond in 1872. Until age fourteen Dietz attended a German-English semi-military academy associated with Saint John's Evangelical Lutheran Church (later Saint John's United Church of Christ). By 1895 he had become a corporal with the Stuart Horse Guards, a cavalry regiment of the Virginia Volunteers, of which he later served as secretary. On 12 June 1894 Dietz married Lillie Rosina Meisel, a Richmond native who died on 23 January 1952. They had two daughters and one son.
With an interest in art and a talent for drawing, Dietz joined a lithography business about 1884 expecting to be assigned to the art department. Instead, he was put to work assisting in the press room, carrying on a tradition of the Dietz family's association with printing dating to the sixteenth century. He learned the workings of a printshop while taking night courses in drawing at the Virginia Mechanics' Institute. An eager and talented student, Dietz accepted an apprenticeship at the printing office of West, Johnston and Company. There he met an itinerant printer from whom he purchased a set of engravers' tools and a supply of boxwood and received a lesson in wood engraving, the major means of illustration used in printing at the time. Dietz later considered the seventy-five cents he spent on the supplies to be the best investment he ever made.
While employed at West, Johnston and Company, Dietz pioneered a method of linoleum engraving and one of embossing on a printing press. A series of jobs with other Richmond printers followed, including an apprenticeship at Andrews, Baptist and Marquess, a well-known art printer. Dietz briefly took charge of the job department at a printing company in Washington, D.C. He gained a reputation for his artistry, and President Benjamin Harrison asked him to design a menu card for a dinner for the French Legation in 1892. Despite his success in Washington, Dietz longed to return to Richmond. By 1893 he had joined the Everett Waddey Company, where he developed a new method of printing maps and drawings that became the industry standard for reproducing intricate details by engraving them on a wax slab, then electroplating the slab to make a printing plate. Late in the 1890s Dietz became foreman of the job department at the J. L. Hill Printing Company. Relying on his experiences in engraving, lithography, typography, and press operations, he opened the Dietz Printing Company in 1901 or 1902 with financing from his parents' physician. By taking the greatest care with orders and providing prompt service, the business thrived. Dietz also spent many years crafting a new typeface, Ultimo, designed to reduce eyestrain by eliminating the sharp edges of traditional typefaces. He earned a reputation for producing exceptionally beautiful work and was later described as a "contemporary Ben Franklin."
Dietz lectured extensively on the graphic arts and his second love, philately, which grew out of a schoolboy hobby. From 1897 to 1900 he edited the magazine Virginia Philatelist. A collector of the stamps of his native German states and his adopted United States, Dietz became interested in the postal history of the Confederate States of America early in his career when he worked with a man who had been the last printer of the Confederacy's postage stamps and currency. Dietz based his first book, Postal Service of the Confederate States of America (1929), on more than thirty years of research and numerous interviews with surviving Civil War-era postmasters. In addition to writing the text, he drew the illustrations, chapter head pieces, and initials, while his print shop also set the type, readied the plates, printed, and published the finished work in three different editions, varying by binding. Considered the preeminent work on Confederate postal history, the 439-page volume earned Dietz the sobriquet Father of Confederate Philately.
In 1931 he published the Dietz Specialized Catalog of the Postage Stamps of the Confederate States of America, with a supplement the following year. He supervised the preparation of three revised and updated editions with slightly varying titles, the last in 1959. Dietz also edited and published a series of philately magazines, Southern Philatelist (1924–1929), New Southern Philatelist (1929–1933), Stamp and Cover Collecting (1933–1936), and Stamp and Cover Collectors' Review (1937–1939). In May 1929 he helped found the Richmond Stamp Club, of which he became the first president, and in February 1935 the Confederate Stamp Alliance, dedicated to the study and dissemination of information on Confederate philately. Dietz and his philatelic works attracted attention around the world. In 1938 the Berliner Philatelisten-Klub of Germany awarded him the Lindenberg Medal for his research. Dietz was only the third American to be so honored in the club's fifty-year history. Other recognition for his exceptional contributions to philately included a medal from the Philatelic Club of Uruguay in 1931, the American Philatelic Society's first Luff Award in 1940, and the Alfred F. Lichtenstein Memorial Award in 1955.
Early in the twentieth century the Dietz Printing Company began publishing as the Press of The Dietz Printing Company. Its catalog included regional and historical books as well as Dietz's own works. In 1923 his son August A. Dietz (1902–1954) became a partner in the business. He changed the publishing imprint to The Dietz Press in 1935 and, as president of that division of the company, expanded the catalog to include children's books, cookbooks, art prints, and many publications for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. The elder Dietz continued to supervise the operations and put his imprimatur on each project until he was well into his eighties.
August Andreas Dietz died at his Richmond home on 26 September 1963 and was interred in the city's Riverview Cemetery. Although no longer owned by the family, Dietz Press continued publishing into the twenty-first century. Dietz's philatelic legacy continued after his death, with the publication of new editions of his catalog of Confederate stamps and the Confederate Stamp Alliance's August Dietz Award for distinguished service to Confederate philately.
Sources Consulted:
Birth and death dates and middle name Death Certificate No. 25464, Richmond City, Virginia Department of Health, Richmond, Va.; typescript autobiography (1962) provided by the Dietz family (2009), copy in Dictionary of Virginia Biography Files, Library of Virginia; Marriage Register, Henrico Co., Bureau of Vital Statistics, Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia; correspondence in Dietz Family Papers, Accession 38714, Library of Virginia; publications include Dietz, "Reminiscences of Thirty-five Years of Printing in Richmond," in Richmond Club of Printing House Craftsmen: Its History and Mission (1921), 17–34, and "The Alphabet of the Future," Commonwealth 3 (Aug. 1936): 13–15; Virginia Philatelist 4 (Sept. 1900): 1 (portrait); Richmond News Leader, 1 Mar. 1929, 25 Jan. 1934; Richmond Times-Dispatch, 4 Apr. 1937 (Sunday Magazine Section), 4 Feb. 1938, 19 Oct. 1959 (quotation); obituaries in Richmond News Leader and Richmond Times-Dispatch, both 27 Sept. 1963 (both with incorrect age of ninety-four), and Virginia Publisher and Printer 47 (Oct. 1963): 7 (with middle name anglicized as Andrew); editorial tribute in Richmond Times-Dispatch, 30 Sept. 1963.
Image courtesy of the Library of Virginia.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Stephen A. Maguire.
How to cite this page:
Stephen A. Maguire,"August Andreas Dietz (1869–1963)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2015 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Dietz_August_Andreas, accessed [today's date]).
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