Walter Trier was born to German-Jewish parents in Prague on 25 June 1890.

After completing his art studies at the Industrial School of Fine and Applied Arts and the Prague Academy in 1906 he entered the Royal Academy, Munich. Trier moved to Berlin in 1910, he developed at a time of huge political upheaval in Berlin in the post-WWI period. In 1913 Trier married Helene Mathews; their daughter, Margaret, was born a year later.

Trier developed his style creating cover illustrations for journals UHU and Die Dame’ he was a political illustrator in leading satirical and anti- fascist magazines plus others in the field of contemporary art and culture.

Trier also created stage designs and murals. The most famous mural he painted was created in 1929 on Kurfürstendamm in Charlottenburg, and like so many other artists of the time his work was affected by censorship: the mural was destroyed by the Nazis in 1933.

As an anti-fascist, Trier's cartoons were bitterly opposed by the Nazis. In 1936 he emigrated to London. During the Second World War, Trier helped the Ministry of Information produce anti-Nazi leaflets and political propaganda. He and his wife became British citizens in 1947, the same year that they moved to Canada to be near their daughter, who had moved to Toronto with her husband in the late thirties.

Trier provided the front cover design for every issue of Lilliput from its start until 1949. Each time the design employed a man, a woman, and a dog. The couple, Frau Lena and Herr Walter, and their Scottish terrier dog were reinvented for each new issue. They were drawn in different places and ages, as different ethnicities . It seems the terrier was based on Trier's own dogs Zottel and Maggy who he immortalised in his Lilliput covers

Trier died on 8 July 1951 at Craigleith, near Collingwood, Ontario, Canada

A truly comprehensive biography ( in German ) can be found here www.walter-trier.de/ and an excellent piece on the website www.illustratorsillustrated.com/walter-trier/