Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by mikeyashworth and tagged with “mikado”. License: All Rights Reserved.

Vol. 2, Ostdeutschland (“Eastern Germany”)

One of a series of six charming small format booklets issued by the Königliche Eisenbahndirektion (“Royal Railway Directorate”) in Altona, Hamburg, and describing the Allgemeine Verkehrs-Mitteilungen und Sehenswürdigkeiten – general railway travel information and sights in the relevant areas of Germany. The organisation of railways in Germany prior to 1918 was somewhat complex but many railway companies were, effectively, nationalised as part of the Preußische Staatseisenbahnen (“Prussian State Railways”) and these booklets all show, in various forms, the Adler or Royal Eagle symbol of the railways as well as the “winged wheel” symbol that was much favoured by various continental railway adminstrations.

The booklets all contain the information that large numbers of visitors were now visiting Germany, many brought by the various steamship lines including Hamburg–Amerika (HAPAG) and the Norddeutscher Lloyd, and given the booklets were issued by the Altona-Hamburg office of the railways one suspects that copies were probably available on board the vessels to be given as publicity to passengers. The booklets were also available by post from the Altona offices. They are not dated but volume one has a manuscript date of ca.1905–07 and given the style this feels correct.

Although each booklet follows the same format each design is subtly different; all are in a loose “Arts & Crafts” style that would morph in Germany into the Werkbund movement and in France to an Art Nouveau style. This includes elements of the cover design, framing and lettering as well as aspects of the editorial text. The booklets contain detachable postcards for mailing and are each printed by a printer in the relevant area of Germany covered by the particular guide.

Volume 2 is for Berlin and Eastern Germany covering areas of Prussia and Saxony. The front cover shows Schloss Marienburg (Lower Saxony), the now lost Wissower Klinken cliff formations on Rügen, and the Brandenburger Tor in Berlin. There are outline maps of the railways in the area covered by the guide as well as of the suburban lines in Berlin. Mention is made of the newly opened first stages of the Berlin Hochbahn (now U-Bahn) and the back cover has a very Imperial series of symbols for the State Railways.

While most booklets (below) have custom lettering for the title, the cover for Volume 2 (above) is typographic: the featured typeface is the wide style of Mikado as cast by the Flinsch foundry in Frankfurt. “Heft 2” is in a German version of Antique No. 8. See the image captions further below for the period typefaces used inside.

At least Vol. 6 was printed by Hans Bleher at Verlags- und Handelsdruckerei Stuttgrart.

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by mikeyashworth. License: All Rights Reserved.

Vol. 1, Norddeutschland (“Northern Germany”), with lettering similar to Kolumbus. The front cover shows the Lombardsbrücke in Hamburg, the Marktplatz in Bremen, and the steamship Deutschland passing the Alte Liebe lighthouse at Cuxhaven.

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by mikeyashworth. License: All Rights Reserved.

Vol. 3, Mitteldeutschland (“Middle Germany”) with cover lettering on top of the Imperial Eagle. The vignettes are of the now vanished Kronentempel pavilion at Bodetal in the Harz, the Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel, and the famous Wartburg overlooking Eisenach.

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by mikeyashworth. License: All Rights Reserved.

Vol. 4, Nordwestdeutschland (“North West Germany”). The cover, along with a steam locomotive and train, is in a rather high ‘Art Nouveau’ style including the lettering, and depicts the famous Kölner Dom.

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by mikeyashworth. License: All Rights Reserved.

Vol. 5, Südwestdeutschland (“south west Germany”). The cover is almost Guimard in design and shows Heidelberg along with a cartouche of a speeding steam locomotive and train.

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by mikeyashworth and tagged with “secession”. License: All Rights Reserved.

The title page to Vol. 1 features a winged wheel and text set in Berthold’s Secession (1901). The initial D is from Herkulanum, Schelter & Giesecke’s name for Mayflower (Conner, 1891).

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by mikeyashworth and tagged with “werk-grotesk”. License: All Rights Reserved.

The introduction to Vol. 5 features a very similar typeface: it’s Werk-Grotesk by Ludwig & Mayer, likewise issued in 1901, with a drop cap from the licht (open) style.

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by mikeyashworth and tagged with “eckmann”. License: All Rights Reserved.

The title page to Vol. 6 is set in the most popular of the so-called Neudeutsch typefaces: it’s Klingspor’s Eckmann (1900).

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by mikeyashworth and tagged with “eckmann”. License: All Rights Reserved.

Table of contents for all six booklets as included in the final volume. Note the two forms of H (“Hamburg” vs. “Harz”) and s/ſ, as well as the use of letterspacing for emphasis.

Most of the cover type is set in Erbar-Grotesk halbfett – with the exception of the year 1932 and the house numbers 11 and 12: these are added from Futura fett. Maybe the printer didn’t have numerals in these sizes at hand. The oldstyle roman is Tiemann-Mediäval.

This posts features selected pages from the guide published for the Mitteldeutsche Funk- und Phono-Schau that took place in Leipzig in the fall of 1932, including the front and back covers and a number of interior pages, with infographics and adverts.

We get to see a range of period typefaces, all released by German foundries in the first third of the 20th century. The oldest one among them is Aviso, which appears for the labels on page 23, listing commonly used electrical circuit symbols. Aviso was first cast by Berthold in 1903. The monolinear italic might have been chosen for its similarity to DIN 16, the standard letterforms used in technical drawings. See the captions for more notes on the type.

The printing – and probably also the design – was done by Leipziger Buchdruckerei AG, a local company with ties to the Social Democrats.

The “Central German Radio and Phono Show” was the third major radio exhibition by the Leipzig chapter of the Arbeiter-Radio-Bund Deutschlands (ARB, “Workers’ Radio Federation of Germany”). In the foreword, the organizers write (translated):

Despite the severe economic crisis, the ARB has taken it upon itself to organize this exhibition. Since the last major exhibition (ARA 1928), transmission and reception technology have seen an upward trend that shows no signs of slowing down. This exhibition is intended to be more than just a promotional and sales event. It aims to introduce the layperson to the wide-ranging and fascinating field of radio technology. The technical processes are explained to visitors in a simple manner, organized into educational groups, using models and practical demonstrations. For the ARB, the goal is to familiarize listeners with the technical processes involved in radio broadcasting. The dissemination of technical knowledge is a cultural endeavor that should not be underestimated and forms the foundation for the ARB’s cultural mission.

The inner cover advertises capacitors, transformers and other parts to DIYers who build their own radios. It uses the same typefaces, with a headline in Energos. The monolinear sript was first cast by Schriftguss in 1932, making it the youngest one used in this booklet.

The text typeface is Säculum. Note the use of tracking for emphasis at the beginning of the last paragraph. The heading uses Erbar-Grotesk with a ch ligature and the standard German quote marks.

The ad by Ludwig Fries relies on Erbar-Grotesk’s space-saving schmalhalbfett style.

The electrical symbols, labeled in Aviso

Tables with values for the electrical resistance of various types of wire and the weight of one meter of wire

Ohm’s law and a formula for calculating the power handling capacity of resistors

The ad for radio journal Die Mirag pairs Energos with two weights of Erbar-Grotesk. The copy is in the Zweite Garnitur that is distinguished by a shorter x-height.

More Energos with Erbar and Tiemann-Mediäval for an by Radio-Schnorr. The logo at the top has handdrawn letters.

Schaub’s ad introduces Kreß-Versalien. The arrow was composed from several sorts, see the small gaps between them.

The Telefunken ad on the back cover uses Futura together with Signal. This script typeface was first cast by Berthold in 1931, one year before Energos.

Print ad for new releases and reissues in the educational book series Kamprath-Skelett – kurz und bündig (“briefly and concisely”) by Ernst Kamprath Verlag, Leipzig. The listed titles include “quick lessons with visual aids in three-color printing” for Latin and French grammar, world and cultural history, and physics.

The design may look like a piece of multiscript typography at first, with its mix of disparate typefaces. And indeed scholars like young (dogmatic and chauvinistic) Jan Tschichold considered blackletter typefaces to be something fundamentally different than roman (incl. sans-serif and “Latin” script) type, denouncing them in die neue typographie from 1928 as “nationalism”, alongside actual non-Latin scripts like Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese etc. But of course all text in this advert is in the Latin script – including the blackletter.

The typefaces are Walter Tiemann’s Tiemann-Fraktur (Klingspor, 1914/1918) and Walter Wege’s Signal (Berthold, 1931/1932). Both appear in two weights each: the large “kurz und bündig” at the top is in the light Script-Signal.

Title page of the book Schellers ausführliche lateinische Sprachlehre oder sogenannte Grammatik, Second Edition, published by Caspar Fritsch in Leipzig, 1782

At the very beginning of the chapter “Italics, small capitals... [etc.]”, of the book The Form of the Book, Tschichold comments on typographic differentiation in scientific books, and uses the case of a Latin grammar in German to illustrate a good example of the use of various typefaces in a text, to create an illuminating contrast. Here's a passage from the English edition:

There were, and are, always publications whose text will benefit and become more lucid and comprehensive if some manner of type differentiation is applied. We cannot help but envy Immanuel Scheller’s setting of the Ausführliche lateinische Sprachlehre (Comprehensive Latin Grammar), Leipzig, 1782 […]. Scheller in 1782 used roman and italic for Latin words. The enviable author and typesetter had at his disposal four different fonts of the same size for four categories of words. […] And how much better-looking a combination is Alte Schwabacher and Breitkopf Fraktur than Garamond and semibold Garamond! Scheller in his grammar book perfectly presents the difference between German and Latin through the clever use of contrasting shapes, Fraktur and Schwabacher on the one hand, roman and italic on the other.

The roman used must be a “Garamond”, at least judging by the italics (although the italics seem to come from a different typeface, or are at least used in a slightly larger body, cf. p. 776–777), but this is not clear. In any case, what is certainly interesting, and Tschichold is right, is the use of the four typographic varieties, and above all the Alte Schwabacher–Breitkopf-Fraktur pair, which form an exemplary body of text.

Page 559 (the one used by Tschichold to illustrate the chapter "Italics, Small Capital...", from his The form of the Book)

The publication accompanied an exhibition by the same name: 50 na 50. Jubileusz 50-lecia Działu Sztuki Wydawniczej Muzeum Narodowego we Wrocławiu, or, in English, Fifty-Fifty. Fifty Years of the Department of Publishing Art at the National Museum in Wrocław.

The book was designed by Marian Misiak and Marcin Zonnenberg as a dialogue between tradition and modernity.

The pattern on the cover, inspired by the traditional marbling technique, was generated using an algorithm for each copy individually by Olaf Schindler. Therefore, there are no two identical covers in the entire edition. The label on the cover, informing about the author and title, was hand-applied – giving the reader a sense of direct contact with the creators of the book.

All this is to pay tribute to the unique collection of publishing art at the National Museum in Wrocław on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of its creation, and at the same time, to make this celebration a collector’s feast.

The book is set in Heneczek Pro and Di Grotesk from Threedotstype.

On the right: original art for Bronisław Zelek’s eponymous typeface, Zelek.

Süßmost – Volksgetränk! (“Sweet must – popular drink!”) is a “practical guide for making unfermented fruit and berry juices at home and in the family”, edited by Maria Kirschner and Alfons Baumgärtner and published by the Catholic Hoheneck-Verlag who dedicated several of its titles to the fight against alcoholism. In 1934, it was located in Berlin SW 48. Baumgärtner may or may not be identical with the clergyman of this name. The cover illustration is by Paula Fischer (signed as “PF”).

The image is taken from the Flickr stream of Rolf Müller a.k.a. grispx, who comments: “The self-supply of the people was one of the percepts of the National Socialists… maybe the least malicious maxim of them.”

Signal is here seen with its eszett (ß) and two umlauts. The blackletter is the bold weight of Senats-Fraktur, designed by Friedrich Bauer and first cast by Genzsch & Heyse in 1912.

This book showcases two houses designed by Le Corbusier together with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret, a single-family house and a semi-detached house. It was published in 1927 for the exhibition of the Weissenhof Estate organized by the Deutscher Werkbund in Stuttgart, and was authored by Swiss architect Alfred Roth (1903–1998) who at that time worked for Le Corbusier and Jeanneret. Zwei Wohnhäuser includes Le Corbusier’s “Five Points to a New Architecture” and a foreword by Hans Hildebrandt. It has 48 pages measuring 29.5×21 cm and was published by Akademischer Verlag Dr. Fr. Wedekind & Co., Stuttgart. For the fiftieth anniverary in 1977, Karl Krämer Verlag issued a facsimile edition, with a foreword by Roth (“Memories of the Construction of the Weissenhof Estate”).

For the typography of the cover and the title page, Willi Baumeister exclusively worked with Fette Venus-Grotesk, the extrabold weight of Bauer’s modernist sans serif. Note the double-story g in the publisher’s credit. This form was shown in a specimen from around 1915, alongside the single-story one that later became the default. None of the currently available digitizations of Venus includes the fett weight. The next best thing probably is Rod McDonald’s Classic Grotesque Bold, which offers an alternate form for a, but not for g, and Font Bureau’s Vonness.

Another detail you may note is Jeanneret’s name on the cover: it’s accidentally spelled with two a’s – an oopsie that neither Baumeister nor the publisher caught before going to print. The typo was fixed in a second printing from 1928.

The text typeface is Alt-Mediäval.

Title page

Photography by Dr. Lossen & Co., i.e. Otto Lossen (1875–1938)

Venus fett is used for headlines and page numbers, and Alt-Mediäval for the justified text, with outdents to mark the paragraph beginnings and increased letterspacing to highlight the keywords

Imprint with a closer look on Alt-Mediäval. Note the tightly spaced pairs for ch and ck, which were available as ligature sorts.

The Mittelrheinisches Musikfest, or Middle Rhine Music Festival, took place in May 1925. It was organized in Trier, Germany, in cooperation with the cities of Saarbrücken and Coblenz (since 1926 spelled Koblenz), and directed by Heinrich Klapstein.

The cover and the title page of the program booklet feature a typeface that was issued only a year or two before: Messe-Grotesk halbfett from 1923 is an extension to Messe-Grotesk-Versalien, a black all-caps design that was first cast in 1921. The series by the AG für Schriftgießerei und Maschinenbau in Offenbach/Main was concluded in 1927 with an inline version. In the 1930s, Berthold sold it abroad under the name Advertisement Grotesque.

The design by Albert Auspurg is characterized by diamond-shaped middle bars (in E, F, H), triangular forms (A, i), and descending diagonals (K, M, R, S). Note the compact capital umlauts in the stacked and justified setting on the cover, and the ligature for ck (but not for ch, although there was one) on the title page.

A 1959 promotional booklet compiled by the Ifo-Institut fur Wirtschaftsforschung, München, for the Deutsche Maschinentechnische Gesellschaft (DMG) – the German Mechanical Engineering Society – to promote the benfits of the further electrification of the West German Railways, DB. The text, photographs and diagrams aim to prove the many benefits of such schemes, from improved productivity, working conditions and the economic superiority of electric traction as against the steam locomotive. The sub-title reads “a task of great urgency”.

At the time German railways compared quite poorly when ranked against other Continental railways – 11% of the system as against Switzerland’s 99% – although in fairness France came in at 15%, Belgium at 29% and the Netherlands at 51%.

Hermann Zapf’s Palatino (Stempel, 1950) is used throughout. It’s the original foundry version, which is distinguished by a number of details: E F show an unseriffed middle bar, p q have no bottom serifs, s S exhibit a horizontal middle segment, v y have a unilateral left serif, and the apex of w extends beyond the x-height.

The last paragraph on this spread shows that Palatino used to have a double hyphen as well as tightly fitted pairs for ch and ck. Both these features were standard in fraktur typefaces. In the first half of the 20th century, they were also common among roman typefaces by German foundries.

Note the use of letterspacing for emphasis, an old habit from the days when blackletter was the dominant type genre in Germany. Fraktur typefaces didn’t have an italic.

German advert from 1913 featuring a heavily armed Santa Claus, delivering pistols and rifles to kids. The copy reads:

It’s high time to find out about the advantages and the absolute harmlessness of Eureka guns in the nearest toy store, if you want to give your boys a bright Christmas joy. Eureka guns can be entrusted to even the smallest children with complete peace of mind, as the projectiles used are the unique Eureka arrows, which stick to all smooth surfaces, but can’t cause any damage.
Suitable for older boys are the Diana air rifles for precision shooting, the safest and cheapest training weapons. They are available in all relevant stores. The interestingly written booklet “Dangerless Shooting Sports for Young and Old” is available free of charge from the arms factory Mayer & Grammelspacher, Rastatt 8.

Christmas 1913 would be the last one in peace time for five years. The mentioned older boys would soon find themselves fighting in World War I, wreaking havoc on Europe with guns that weren’t as harmless as the advertised training weapons. Founded in 1890, Mayer & Grammelspacher with their Diana brand is still in the air gun business today, but no longer caters to children.

While the copy is set in a standard Fraktur, the initial line features a Breite Kanzlei. “Eine helle Weihnachtsfreude” is in a bolder style, probably Mainzer Fraktur fett or similar. “Eureka” on the target cards is lettering – together with the illustration, it had to be executed in reverse. The unknown artist accidentally mirrored the letter u.

Ad for Theophil Müller’s “Workshops for German household goods” from 1906, set in Behrens-Schrift. The firm in Dresden claimed to “manufacture good and cheap household items, individual pieces of furniture, and entire home furnishings, based on designs by outstanding artists and with the constant collaboration of Gertrud Kleinhempel and Margarete Junge.”

Together with her fellow student Margarete Junge, Gertrud Kleinhempel (1875–1948) designed the first pieces of furniture for the newly founded Dresdner Werkstätten für Handwerkskunst, later known as Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau. As early as 1902 she left the Deutsche Werkstätten and started working for Müller’s rival company. From 1907 to 1938 she was the head of the textile class at the Bielefeld School of Crafts and Applied Arts, and a charter member of the Deutscher Werkbund in 1907. In 1921, Kleinhempel was appointed the first female professor in Prussia.

Margarete Junge (1874–1966) took part in a number of arts and crafts exhibitions, including the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, USA. She likewise was one of the first artists to become a member of the Werkbund in 1908. Her teaching career began in 1907 at the Dresden School of Applied Arts. In 1915, Junge was appointed the first female professor at the Royal Saxon School of Applied Arts in Dresden. She was removed from office by the Nazis in 1934.

Behrens-Schrift was designed by Peter Behrens, another founding member of the Werkbund, and released by the Rudhard’sche Gießerei (from 1906 known as Klingspor) in 1901. It’s here used in five different sizes, featuring the long s (ſ) and ligatures for the ch pair. Names are emphasized by the use of letterspacing (Theophil Müller) and all caps (Gertrud Kleinhempel, Margarete Junge).

Detail.

This leaflet from the 1930s shows various products by the Georgii Elektro-Motoren-Apparatebau-Aktiengesellschaft from Stuttgart, Germany. Founded in 1924, the company started to manufacture electric motors for the use in sewing machines in 1926. The Kobold in the name probably refers to the small size of their motors. As of 2020, Georgii Kobold is still in the same business.

The typography uses three (or four?) weights of a typeface family known as Neue moderne Grotesk or Aurora-Gotesk, among many other names. They are paired with the compressed style from the same series, which goes by the names of Neue moderne Grotesk eng, lnserat-Grotesk schmal, or Aurora-Grotesk schmalhalbfett VIII. While the compressed has been available in digital form from Bitstream as Aurora Condensed since the early 1990s, an accurate digitization of the regular-wide styles was released only in 2020, as Neue moderne Grotesk FSL by Forgotten Shapes.

Packaging for a water-soluble powder for preserving raw eggs, produced by Henkel. The use of Deutschland (Berthold, 1933) for the product name suggests a date in the 1930s or early 1940s. It’s combined with several styles from the Futura series, including the Condensed for “Huhn im Winter” (“chicken in winter”).

Note the use of a ck ligature (or tightly fitted pair) in “trocken” and of letterspacing for emphasis in “Leere Packung muß zum Absender zurück!” (“Empty pack must be returned to sender!”). Unlike in English, the use of a possessive apostrophe had fallen out of favor in German spelling already back then. It can still be found in brand names like Beck’s. Punctuation like exclamation marks is generally not preceded by white space.

In these days dominated by the Corona virus, Berlin’s public transport company (BVG) calls to keep your distance – “H A L T E T  A B S T A N D !”. The letters of the hashtag set an example and exhibit considerably increased spacing. The font in use is the Bold Italic from the BVG’s corporate typeface, FF Transit. The profile name (rendered in the operating system’s respective sans serif, here San Francisco) temporarily got extra spaces as well. Even the (custom) letterforms of the logo follow suit. Do so, too, and stay at home.

The motto “Weil wir Dich lieben” (“Because we love you”) is at the heart of the BVG’s communication since 2015. The award-winning campaign was developed by GUD.berlin.

For comparison: The standard version with the logo letters within the yellow heart.

Calendar for the year 1912, edited by Otto and Hanns Martin Elster and published by G. Grote’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin, in memory of German novelist Wilhelm Raabe (1831–1910).

The cover, the title page (shown above), and the month names show fraktur lettering by Walter Buhe. Born in 1882 in Aschersleben, Buhe studied at the Staatliche Lehranstalt des Berliner Kunstgewerbemuseums. In 1912, he started teaching there himself. A few years later, in 1915, the Stempel foundry released his only typeface design, Buhe-Fraktur.

The typeface used to typeset the calendar – with name days and other ecclesiastical as well as secular special dates, like the Kaiser’s birthday in January 27th – is Weiß-Fraktur by Emil Rudolf Weiß. Initially designed for the exclusive use in the Tempel-Klassiker editions by the Tempel-Verlag Leipzig (1909–1911), it was officially released by the Bauer foundry in 1913.

See additional images in the album by Flickr user altpapiersammler.

Invitation for a masked ball organized by the male choral society Typographia, reproduced in Typographische Mitteilungen, Vol. 10, No. 3, March 1913:

Männergesangsverein Typographia München
Masken-Ball
Samstag, den 8. Januar 1913, abends 8 Uhr
im großen Saale (2. Stock) der Zentralstelle
Während der Pause gelangt zur Aufführung «Im Hofbräuhaus»
Komisches Singspiel von Georg Köhler

Behrens-Schrift is used in three sizes, with both forms of s (“Komiſches”), ligatures for ch ck ſt, and outward-pointing guillemets (« »). Note the use of letterspacing for emphasis in Georg Köhler’s name. The illustration is signed by Otto Obermeier (1883–1958).

The second image shows the bold weight of König-Antiqua.

Het Frame-boekje en Het Bandenboekje (“The Frame Booklet” and “The Tyre Booklet”) are two instructional booklets for bicycle repair and construction, issued by the Centraal Bureau voor den Rijwielhandel (“Central Office for Bicycle Trade”) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Both booklets have a cover printed on “elephant skin” paper, with titles set in Egmont. The interior uses Romana, assisted by Nobel and a handful of other typefaces in the advertisement section in the back of the booklets.

The booklets are not dated, but some of the ads mention both what they have on offer currently, and what they will have in stock once the war is over. This makes it likely that the books were issued between the winter of 1944 (when half of the Netherlands were liberated from the Nazi occupation) and the end of WWII in the Netherlands on May 5, 1945.

Printed by Drukkerij De Globe, Amsterdam

Title page. Het Frame-boekje came with a paper ruler (centimeters and inches). “Linophile” is obviously a pseudonym.

Page from Het Bandenboekje. Note that the printer uses a few habits that later went out of fashion: subheadings are right-aligned within the text block; the printers used spacing for emphasis instead of italics; they used double quotes where nowadays single quotes are the custom. In addition, the opening quotes are placed on the baseline, a habit that has disappeared in the Netherlands altogether, with exception of a few newspapers and institutes that still favor this style.

Spread from Het Frameboekje, with page numbers on top of the page; right-aligned subheads, and tables placed center-aligned.

Instructional illustration, showing the use of Bahr’s Normograph for lettering. From Typotheque:

The Normograph, for example, invented by vocational school teacher Georg Bahr, was patented in Germany in 1909 and in America in 1912. Bahr’s Normograph did not contain a full character set, but only a few elementary shapes — stems, arms, curve segments, diagonals — that needed to be combined into letters and numerals.

Advertisement for Cyclia, with a few weights and sizes of Nobel. “We are happy to advise you about purchasing...” followed by a list of bicycle parts (this is also a modest suggestion for type designers looking for Dutch words for type specimens). “Handelsonderneming” uses Monoline Script.

Esteka Achterlichten (“Esteka Rear Lights”); Esteka is probably a phonetic acronym for S.T.K.

Advertisements; spread from Het Bandenboekje. In contrast to the body text, the ad on the right hand page does use Romana Italic. The “Wereld” advertisement says: “The end of the war marks a new era for the world / De Wereld”.

Advertisement for wooden wheels: “In normal times, I should not belong in this booklet. However, in these times, the bicycle repair gentlemen cannot do without me if they want to keep their trade on track”. The ad below, using Gill Sans and Beton, mentions both current service (in war time) and future stock (in time of peace).

Ad for steel bullets, using Monoline Script and Breite halbfette Grotesk; the bottom advertisement for ‘raw material’ pairs Monoline Script with Egmont.

In this acrostic, the stacked initials from Schraffierte Glass-Antiqua (“Shaded Glass Roman”, Genzsch & Heyse, 1913) form the brand name “Bromograph”. They are paired with Genzsch-Kursiv (the italic companion to Genzsch-Antiqua, 1907).

Bromograph is the trade name of a machine “used for multiple developing and printing of photographs from one negative onto a continous roll of paper” [Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, CC BY-NC-ND]. The Bromograph-Aktiengesellschaft was located at Alte Jakobstraße 9 in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Paul Drews GmbH is another manufacturer of photographic reproduction machines (or the successor?) at the same address, mentioned in 1927, 1932 and 1941.

This ad was included in Gebrauchsgraphik Vol. 3, No. 4 from April 1926.

Dust jacket, front cover.

Herodes by Ernest Claes is the first volume in a series of stories by Flemish authors, published by Snoeck Decaju en Zoon (1872–2006).

The story itself reads like an odd mix of Game of Thrones meets the New Testament. It starts with the introduction of an evil and anti-semitic oppressor – King Herodes – who is confronted with the news of a new-born king of the Jews that might end his reign, and ends with his decision to have all infants in Bethlehem killed. Given the occupation of Belgium in the 1940s and the dubious relationship of the author with the authorities in that period, I’m not sure what to make of the story’s message.

The book credits the “Nationale Hoogere School voor Bouwkunst en Sierkunsten” for the typographic design, with woodcut illustrations by Fernand Baudin (1918–2005). Baudin was an illustrator, typographer and a book designer who was also active as a teacher and as a member of the ATypI. It’s likely that he is the (uncredited) designer of this book.

The typography of the book uses the semibold (halfvet) weight of Hollandsche Mediaeval, a low-contrast serif by Sjoerd H. de Roos that has been a popular choice in The Netherlands for books in all genres in the 1920s–1940s. In their “Lettertypen” catalogue (seventh edition, undated), Tetterode file the design under “Humanen” (Humanist):

The thick-thin distribution axis is oriented diagonally to the left, as in the manuscript. The serifs ends with a firm, angular cut. These characteristics also show in the Dutch Mediaeval (...). Although this first original Dutch letter from the modern times connects with the roman that Nicolas Jenson used in Venice in 1470, its character is unmistakably twentieth-century.

Erasmus Initialen (serie 1, solid), another design by de Roos, is used for the drop cap at the beginning of the story.

The series is named “De Blauwe Snoeckjes” (The blue pikes). The blue vignet shows a man, sitting in a chair with a book and a pike (snoek), and a text saying ”met een snoecksken in een hoeksken” (in a corner with a pike)

Front and back of the book cover.

Published by Eugen Diederichs in 1900, Der Schauspieler marks the very first use of Eckmann for a book. The text titled “The actor, an artistic problem” is a study by theater actor and stage manager Max Martersteig (1853–1926), originally written in 1893. The softcover edition was printed between 20 September and 20 October 1900 by Breitkopf & Härtel, who are listed among the first printing companies to have acquired the typeface in an early specimen. The entire book is set in Otto Eckmann’s typeface and also features some of the accompanying ornaments and border elements.

The copy depicted above is shown in the exhibition about book art currently on display at the Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg. The colors of the banderole appear to be the same as used for a similar blurb on a specimen by the Rudhard’sche Gießerei, suggesting that the book was used by the foundry as a promotional item for the new typeface.

Title page. The D in “Der” is different from the one in “Diederichs” (see also the cover and the banderole).

Eckmann has alternates for D, H, I, and T. In 1904, Eugen Diederichs moved from Leipzig to Jena.

Spread from the interior, with drop cap and ornaments. In the last two lines of the right page, two floral elements from Eckmann-Schmuck appear inline. They seem to be used in place of dashes.

Like most blackletter types, Eckmannschrift has no italics. Tracking is used for emphasis, see “Intuition” (left) and “darzuſtellen” (right), among other words.

The text ends with a tapering column (Spitzkolumne in German).

The colophon ends with a variation of the traditional greeting used by German printers and typesetters: “Gott grüß die neue deutsche Kunst!”