Edion-Eduard Müller advertising letter
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.
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See also this other ad by Edion-Eduard Müller from ca. 1926. It uses several of the same typefaces, plus a number of blackletter types.