Werner Klemke was a German graphic artist, book illustrator, and professor whose career developed in the GDR. He was known primarily for his woodcuts and extensive work illustrating literary classics, as well as for the distinctive covers he created for Das Magazin.

Born in Berlin in 1917, Klemke grew up in the family of a carpenter and began drawing at an early age. After graduating from a Berlin secondary school in 1936, he briefly studied to become a painting teacher in Frankfurt an der Oder. In 1937, he left the course and began working as an animator at Kruse-Film.

During the Second World War, Klemke served in the German army from 1939 and worked in the administrative office of an anti-aircraft unit on the Western Front from 1940. During his military service, he altered documents for Dutch Jews, helping them avoid deportation. After the war, he was held as a prisoner by the British near Norden in East Frisia. In 1945, with his involvement, The Bremen Town Musicians was published in Norden, described as the first illustrated children's book published in postwar Germany.

Klemke returned to Berlin in 1946 and initially supported himself by painting lampshades and shop windows, decorating taverns, and producing posters. From 1947 to 1950, he worked for numerous newspapers and magazines, including Neue Berliner Illustrierte, Ullenspiegel, Junger Pionier, and ABC. In 1948, Verlag Volk und Welt commissioned him to produce more than 100 woodcuts illustrating Georg Weer's Humorous Sketches from German Commercial Life.

Klemke went on to illustrate around 800 books by authors including Homer, Boccaccio, Geoffrey Chaucer, the Brothers Grimm, Alexander Pushkin, Denis Diderot, Montesquieu, Thomas Mann, and Charles De Coster. From 1955 to 1990, he created more than 400 covers for Das Magazin, often concealing a small black cat somewhere in each design. His illustrated Russian-language and mathematics textbooks were recognised in the GDR among its most beautiful books.

From 1951, Klemke taught at the Berlin-Weißensee School of Art and Applied Arts, becoming a professor in 1954. That year he travelled to China on a study visit, where he studied the art of colour woodcut. He became a full member of the Academy of Arts of the GDR in 1961 and served as secretary of its visual arts section from 1964. He ended his teaching career in 1982.

Klemke received the National Prize of the GDR in 1962, 1969, and 1977, the latter in first class, and the Order of Merit for the Fatherland in 1982. He was made an honorary member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR in 1973 and an honorary citizen of Certaldo, Italy, the birthplace of Giovanni Boccaccio. He died in Berlin in 1994.

Klemke Werner