In 1881, brothers Hermann, Gustav, and Wilhelm Schurath opened a paper shop with a bag-making workshop in Leipzig. They added a paper mill in their home town of Brandis, Saxony, in 1883. Fifty-five years later, in 1938, Wilhelm Schurath G.m.b.H. issued this invoice for 2,260 glassine window envelopes with gummed flaps, plus another fifty of second quality.

The design of the invoice features four different styles from a large sans-serif family that went under various names. The company name and location are shown in the bold extended Edel-Grotesk fett a.k.a. Aurora V. All other preprinted text (disregarding the typewritten additions) is set in three weights from the regular-wide Neue moderne Grotesk a.k.a. Aurora I–IV.

Another invoice in SLUB’s Saxonia collection shows that the same basic design was used already in 1936. On that version, parts of the header are set in two weights of Futura, though, resulting in a less harmonious pairing.

According to Frank Schimpke, the company continued to operate as Wilhelm Schurath KG until 1970, when it was nationalized and renamed VEB Verpackungsmittelwerk Brandis.

Detail: “Healthy children has every mother who uses Alippi’s Hygienic Milk Bottle and Rubber Cup Dripper.”

Eckmann-Schrift was first cast in 1900 by the Rudhard’sche Gießerei in Offenbach, which from 1906 on was known as Gebr. Klingspor. In 1902, a bolder weight was added. This ad uses the original style, with its double hyphen, long s (ſ), and ligatures for ch, ck and tz (in “Chemnitz”, but not in “benutzt”). The ornaments are part of the typeface, too, while the manicule was not. “Triumph-Nasenbecher” is set in Carola-Grotesk (Berthold, 1896).

The Alippi company was established in 1877 as a specialist store for rubber goods and bandages. While founder Oskar Felix Alippi dedicated himself to the development of a seamless rubber hose, his wife Agnes Elisabeth took over the business side of things. In 1908, around the time this ad was issued, she ran the store on Innere Plauensche Straße in Zwickau, Saxony, named “A.E. Alippi”. Hermann Friedrich Alippi (their son?) was in charge of the manufacturing business in nearby Chemnitz.

Detail: “Bathe the nose with the Triumph nose cup. Best remedy for colds and nasal catarrh, suitable for steam bath.”

Paper bag advertising M. Georg Püschmann’s “first specialist store” for tobacco in Neukirchen im Erzgebirge, Saxony.

While “Gute Zigarren” at the top is lettering, the remaining six lines are set in six different fonts from four typefaces: Inserat-Grotesk schmal (with thick-thin underline), Bernhard-Antiqua, two weights of Säculum, and two sizes of a yet unidentified bold and rather wide Grotesk.

The design is undated, but based on the release dates of the identified typefaces, it must be from after 1911.

Louis Miethe was a plumber in Leipzig, Germany, and purveyor to the Saxon court. The business is long gone, and the building at Arthur-Hoffmann-Straße 28 (in 1900: Äußere Bairische Straße) now houses a wool and yarn shop. The mounted letters on the shopfront have been preserved, though. They bear witness to the fact that in early 20th century Germany, Eckmann (1900) was ubiquitous – not only in printed matter, but also in the streets.

For 25 years, the neighboring house at number 30 was home to Louis Miethe Buchhandlung, a bookstore run by Andreas Bode. The great-great-grandson of Louis had to close shop earlier this year.

The pictures were captured by Google Street View in August 2022.

Detail: the first A was mounted the wrong way – a slip that went unfixed for more than 100 years.

Drei Rosen was a Konsumgaststätte in Rötha, Saxony, just south of Leipzig. Located at the town square, the inn went under this floral name already in 1908, albeit with a different sign. The building goes back all the way to around 1410. According to Schwarze Lichter der Stadt, the once popular restaurant has been disused since 1995. The adjacent Theater der Drei Rosen offered film screenings from 1924 until 1991, and was demolished in 2015.

The sign with letters patterned after Eckmann was installed during GDR times. It’s framed by the Konsum logo (designed in 1959 by Karl Thewalt) with a sublogo for the state-controlled restaurants on the left and the titular three roses on the right.

Documented by Monsier Adrien in March 2024.

Deutsche Fotothek dates this photograph to “around 1935/1940”.

Historic image of a printing firm’s building in Frohburg, Saxony (Germany). The firm printed newspapers such as Frohburger Wochenblatt and later Wirtschafts-Anzeiger, the latter using Triumph (1929) for its masthead. The signage on the building was created using the same typeface.

Parts of the signage on the landmarked building have survived until today: the word “Buchdruckerei” (print shop), the stylized printers coats of arms, as well as a ceramic relief showing Johannes Gutenberg created by Kurt Feuerriegel.

Nameplate of the Wirtschafts-Anzeiger issue from January 30, 1943. The smaller lines are set in Romana and Nofretete.

The LAG Gewaltfreies Zuhause Sachsen e.V. is committed to combating domestic violence and stalking throughout the German state of Saxony. In addition to the association, there is also the Domestic Violence Specialist Unit, which focuses on representing the interests of the organization of all violence and women's protection facilities and advice centres against domestic violence and stalking.

Studiokwi developed a new corporate identity for the LAG Gewaltfreies Zuhause Sachsen e.V. and the associated specialist center. The project included the modernization of the logo and the development of different logo variants for various applications and media, the conception and design of a corporate identity as well as the conception, design and implementation of the website (tba).

The associated print campaign was designed by Dina Osmanova (Vier für Texas) and advised by studiokwi.

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Just like the recently featured Begriffe-Lotto, Wir sammeln Pilze (“We gather mushrooms”) is a game issued around 1981 by VEB Plasticart Annaberg-Buchholz, produced in their Werk 4 in Karl-Marx-Stadt, the Saxon city nowadays known again as Chemnitz.

And just like Begriffe-Lotto with its mix of Cut-In and Thannhaeuser-Schrift, this board game illustrates the gamut of typographic options in East Germany at the time: body copy was to a large extent still set manually, with metal type dating back several decades, to be printed in letterpress.

Designers in the GDR strived for a greater palette. For display purposes, they found interesting contemporary faces in the offerings of the NSW, the “non-socialist economic area”, read: the capitalist West. In this case, it’s Marianna by Samoan New Zealand designer Joseph Churchward. The chubby face with forms evocative of curving mushroom heads (see also Bravado) was available from West German company Berthold Fototype and also from French press type manufacturer Mecanorma.

The insert with the rules of the game features a headline in Aktuell, created by Walther Schnippering and released by Schriftguss before the war, in 1935. The text face is the slightly younger Primus-Antiqua. Made in-house at VEB Typoart, apparently as a socialist clone of Excelsior (Linotype, 1931), it was first cast in 1950.

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Source: www.ebay.de allyouneed0785. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.ebay.de olkrieg. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.ebay.de gonzostar-39. License: All Rights Reserved.

Typographic choices in the GDR were not limited to the typefaces by VEB Typoart. And at the same time, the designs by the state-owned foundry were omnipresent in East Germany.

This game for pre-school children is a good example for that. The name, Begriffe-Lotto, is rendered in caps from Cut-In. The monolinear geometric sans with rounded terminals was drawn by Australian designer Maurice Schlesinger and issued by Letraset, the British manufacturer of dry transfer lettering products, around 1973. It somehow found its way across the Iron Curtain, and is used here with custom ligatures for FF and TT and a modified R (cf. the original glyph). A modern display style for a colorful packaging design!

The accompanying leaflet, in contrast, is letterpress printed, in a single color. Text is set in a typeface that was already more than half a century old at the time: Thannhaeuser-Schrift. This contrasted sans with wide proportions and a small x-height was conceived by Herbert Thannhaeuser and first cast by Schriftguss in 1929. In 1951, the Dresden-based company was merged with other East-German foundries into Typoart, where Thannhaeuser-Schrift was continued to be cast.

Begriffe-Lotto came in two versions. Number 1 was produced by VEB Plasticart Annaberg-Buchholz. The more extensive number 2 carries the logo of Spika – short for Spielewerk Karl-Marx-Stadt.

Passage is a residency programme for lens-based artists organised in the region of the Dübener Heide, between the German states of Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. Once part of East Germany, the region has undergone extensive changes in landscape and land use, from its industrial past to more recent environmental interventions. The scope of the programme is to register the current socio-geographical status and to highlight the transitional nature of this territory, through the research and interpretation by the artists-in-residence.

The visual identity was developed by Berlin-based Grupppo, following a one-month research in the area, drawing inspirations from old (and new) cartography, landscape photography, and especially by taking a lot of flâneur walks around.

The typographical choice wants to reflect the dialogue between history and present, with the pairing of Club Lithographer, a Victorian-inspired cursive face by David Jonathan Ross, and Apfel Grotezk, the neo-grotesque geometric typeface by Luigi Gorlero, available from Collletttivo. In some applications, Basteleur by Keussel (Velvetyne) was used for headlines.

The programme is initiated by the Kultur- und Kunstverein Kemberg e.V. and financed through the LEADER grant and the European Social Fund. The next open call for applications will start in January 2023.

Selling shoes and boots in 1939, at the brink of World War II.

Neue moderne Grotesk, also known as Aurora-Grotesk among many other names, was used in several weights for a catalog listing the products of A. Atmanspacher.

The company was founded by Albin Atmanspacher (1859–1946) in 1887. In 1903 the shoe manufacturer established the Panther brand. See a previous catalog (in more sophisticated design) from 1910, and a poster designed by Ludwig Hohlwein from around 1925. The panther illustration on the catalog from 1939 likewise is signed by Hohlwein – a poster artist deeply involved with the Nazis. In a totalitarian state, not even shoes are left untainted: The slogan that previously read der gute Panther-Schuh (“the good Panther shoe”) was updated to “the good German Panther-Schuh”.

The factory in Ehrenfriedersdorf near Zschopau, Saxony, was heavily damaged in the war. After reconstruction, the production was continued in the GDR under the name VEB Schuhfabrik Panther Ehrenfriedersdorf. [Landesamt für Denkmalpflege]

The modulated sans with monocular a used on the 1940/IV addendum is Kräftige Mendelssohn-Grotesk (Schriftguss, 1930s) by local artist Georg Mendelssohn from Dresden. The letterhead at the top left features blackletter and sans-serif lettering (not type).

Neue moderne Grotesk is paired with Romanisch or similar.

Addendum to altpapiersammler’s find of an advertising letter by Edion-Eduard Müller.

This ad by the dubious mail order company for beauty and health products uses several of the same typefaces, including Bernhard-Antiqua schmalfett for the headline – with a double exclamation mark and no less than three manicules (☛☞).

The second-largest type (“Erfolg”) is also a design by Lucian Bernhard, Bernhard-Fraktur extrafett (Bauer, 1924). It’s sandwiched by a compressed blackletter, Amts-Fraktur eng halbfett, designed by Heinrich Hoffmeister and issued by the Stempel foundry in 1909. The smaller bold blackletter (“Jeder Käufer …”, “Einige Beispiele …”) is not Bernhard-Fraktur, but the similar, albeit less expressive Buhe-Fraktur fett. It was added in 1922 to Walter Buhe’s family for Stempel.

While the envelope in the other post is not explicitly dated, this advert mentions a 1926 date in one of the customer testimonials on the back side.

“Noch nie hat” is Sorbonne fett (Berthold, 1908).

Envelope issued by Edion-Eduard Müller from Klingenthal in Saxony, Germany, on the occasion of the Reichs-Gesundheits-Woche (“Imperial Health Week”), with B2B ads for Alma, a remedy for corn, the Müllersche Schönheitskur (beauty treatments) No. 50 and 51, and similar cosmetic products.

This piece of ephemera is probably from the mid 1920s. The main typeface is the schmalfett (bold condensed) style of the Bernhard-Antiqua series. First cast by the Flinsch foundry in 1912, it’s better known under the name Bernhard Antique today.

In 1892, Eduard “Edi” Müller (1869–1937) published his first mail order catalog for all kinds of beauty and health products. According to an article on the website of the town of Klingenthal, there is no verifiable business registration for the company indicated in the catalog, and the listed branches from all over the world were fictitious. The letterbox company was probably a “well camouflaged facility for laundering money earned in the red light district”, says Dieter Arzberger, a local historian. By 1918, Müller owned several cinemas named Edion (apparently a portmanteau of his nickname Edi and the Odeon brand name), which hosted vaudeville shows and “adult-only” erotic screenings.

Sign in Camellia on the façade of a closed-down shoe store in Zwickau, Saxony. Camellia is an all-lowercase/unicase face designed by Tony Wenman and issued by Letraset in 1972. It comes with wide and narrow forms for all letters. This sign exclusively uses the former. The original stub ascenders on h were lengthened for better legibility. The Konsum logo with the K made from a smokestack and a sickle reveals that this store dates back to the GDR days. Documented by Monsieur Adrien in September 2019.