Einrichtungshaus Reinicke & Andag, Halle
Reinicke & Andag’s furniture store was founded in 1887. It’s likely that the neon sign at the façade in Große Klausstraße 22 in central Halle, directly opposite of the Halloren Café, dates from the GDR days. It pairs caps from a grotesk (distinguished by a straight-legged R and an S with a horizontal middle part) with a bold script. The long bar in G suggests that the former might have been modeled after Akzidenz-Grotesk (cf. this specimen of Standard, as the face was called in the US). The latter is directly based on the bold weight of a typeface designed by Erich Mollowitz. It was first cast in 1936 – by C.E. Weber as Forelle and by J.D. Trennert as Rheingold. In 2016, Hans-Peter Reinicke, owner in the fourth generation, had to close the business for good.
Documented by Monsieur Adrien in February 2020.
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Here’s a glimpse into the visual identity of Reinicke & Andag as used in the mid 1930s, i.e. around the time when Forelle was issued.
The first image shows an invoice from March 1936. The letterhead is entirely hand-lettered, in a seriffed style distinguished by an A with a V-shaped bar.
The quote from February 1936 has a different, typographic head. It’s set in Koch-Antiqua. The company name and the place feature the elegant Oberlängen cut with its extra tall capitals and long ascenders.
The third image shows the invitation to a “sample show of German workmanship”, held on the occasion of Reinicke & Andag’s 50th anniversary in 1937. This design pairs script lettering with a narrow textura.
See also the neon sign of Bestattungen Carl Cissée, Braunschweig.
The broken neon was taken down, see these images by Jim Cooper from November 2021: