Jan von Werth, Cologne
Spotted by Monsieur Adrien in October 2023
Jan von Werth is a traditional Cologne restaurant opened in 1950 by Maria and Hubert Schmitz. Named after a cavalry general from the Thirty Years’ War, the inn was taken over by a brewery, the Cölner Hofbräu P. Josef Früh KG, in 2018. Chances are that the neon sign modeled after Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch was installed around that time, when the Jan von Werth underwent renovations.
First cast by the Klingspor foundry in 1925, Rudolf Koch’s blackletter design was initially known as Missal-Schrift. It was named Wilhelm-Klingspor-Schrift in honor of the founder who died shortly after its release. The “em” in “Früh em Jan von Werth” is set in caps from Optima. Coincidentally, its designer, Hermann Zapf, began to take an interest in lettering in 1935 when he, at the age of sixteen, saw Rudolf Koch’s memorial exhibition in Nuremberg.
