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Otto Hendel (1820–1898) was a German publisher in Halle/Saale who took over the publishing house and book store founded by his grandfather Johann Christian Hendel (1742–1823) in 1768. In 1886, he founded the Bibliothek der Gesamt-Litteratur, “to make the best of the literary works produced by civilized nations, both past and present, available to the German people in attractive and affordable editions.” After thirty years, the library had grown to include 2,165 volumes.

Shown here is a translation of William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, published around 1890. Title and author’s name are set in two sizes of Fleischmann-Gotisch. Cut by Johann Fleischmann in the mid-18th century and known at Enschedé as Duits (or Duyts), it was later recut at Flinsch as Fleischmann-Gotisch and at Krebs as Holländische Gotisch. The word “von” is added in some Schwabacher. The grotesk caps used for the publisher’s name probably are custom drawn.

Flyer for a gig with Hellthorn and Corps Vidés, December 5th, 2025, at Le Winger in Toulouse, France. The main font in use is Holland-Gotisch, one of the digitizations of an 18th-century design also known as Fleischmann-Gotisch.

The sign featuring Agincourt, spotted in 2012

Der Weiße Schwan (“The White Swan”) is a pub and also a beer museum located in the old city of Heidelberg, Germany.

In 2012, their hanging sign with a painting of the eponymous water bird featured the name in Agincourt. The display blackletter was designed by David Quay and named after the England’s victorious battle in the Hundred Years’ War. Letraset released it in 1983. The sign thus can’t be any older than that (but probably was made later).

Sometime between 2018 and 2020, the sign was renovated, with a new swan and also a new typeface. Or rather, an old one: Weiß-Gotisch was first cast by Bauer in 1936 and is named after its designer, Emil Rudolf Weiß.

The new sign as documented in 2025, with Weiß-Gotisch. The article “zum” is now capitalized.

The sign on the façade uses custom-made letterforms. They are still based on a typeface, though, albeit loosely: it’s a bolder rendition of another design by Emil Rudolf Weiß, namely Weiß-Rundgotisch. See its glyph set for comparison.

“Weisser” is here spelled with a double s instead of an eszett (ß). This isn’t quite according to the rules, but perfectly readable. Blackletter aficionados will notice another, more serious error. Can you spot it? (And no, I’m not talking about the use of all caps for “BIERMUSEUM”).

In August 1942, the Second World War was in full swing and Wehrmacht troops were approaching Stalingrad. At home in the German Empire – in Nuremberg, the city that previously hosted the Nazi Party rallies – the population was offered distraction and entertainment in the form of “true-to-nature geography and ethnology”.

Each week, the Kaiser-Panorama (est. 1888) in the Mauthalle presented a different virtual journey. This time, visitors could view stereoscopic glass slides depicting fifty three-dimensional scenes from the Republic of Peru in South America, from the Pichu-Puchu [sic!] to a herd of llamas. Students and DAF members paid a reduced entry fee; soldiers, children, seniors and disabled persons even less.

The typography of the leaflet combines blackletter and non-blackletter typefaces. There are two sans serifs, the bold rounded Block and the wide Industria, both from before the First World War. The price information at the bottom is set in an Art Nouveau roman that’s even older, Schelter-Antiqua halbfett from 1906. The two blackletter typefaces are the youngest designs: the dates are shown in Straßburg, released in 1926, and the list of scenes in Thannhaeuser-Fraktur, first cast in 1938.

Heartbeat (November 1981) utilises contoured Helvetica and Eurostile Extended for the album title and artist names respectively.

Chris & Cosey, sometimes known as Carter Tutti, are a musical duo formed in 1981, consisting of couple Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti, both previously members of industrial music pioneers Throbbing Gristle. Shown here are the covers of their first four albums, released between 1981 and 1985 on Rough Trade.

[More info on Discogs]

Trance (May 1982), featuring Caslon Antique for the title and artist name, and Melior for the name of their side project at the time, Creative Technology Institute (CTI)

Songs of Love & Lust (January 1984) features Phyllis, alongside University Roman.

Techno Primitive (stylized as Technø Primitive, 1985) keeps things simple; using only Antique Olive in two weights, Black and Nord.

Karuta is a traditional Japanese card game where players listen to short descriptions read aloud from a reader’s card. Each turn, players race to grab the matching card with the corresponding picture or text, and the player with the most cards at the end wins.

Font Karuta is a variation designed for typography enthusiasts. Instead of pictures, the reader announces the font name and description on the reader’s card, and players compete to pick up the card displaying that font. The player who collects the most cards wins the game.

This edition is the “extension package” featuring only blackletter designs.

From top left to bottom right: Respira Black, FF Brokenscript, a couple letters from Breitkopf-Fraktur, Blackmoor, Claudius, an e and an exclamation mark from Old English, Wallau, Amador, Fakir, San Marco, American Text, Caslon-Gotisch, Engravers Old English, Marian Black, Fette Fraktur, Lucida Blackletter, JAF Herb, Gutenberg Textura, Alte Schwabacher, Goudy Text, Fette Kanzlei, and a tiny bit of Fette Gotisch. Featured in the game but not shown in the images are Deutsche Schrift and Wedding Text.

The box front features the title in Amador, with Clairvaux for the list of included typefaces. The Japanese font appears to be DNP Shuei ShogoMincho. The Font Karuta logo is in Akko.

The German-language game instructions are set in Gutenberg Textura with a headline in Blackmoor, in caps of alternating colors.

Cover with slanted Croissant for the title

From the Ventoline website (translated from the French):

Ventoline is a fanzine born of both a daily enthusiasm for everything to do with music, and a genuine weariness at the near-absence of women's words on this vast subject. Commenting, criticizing, prescribing, sharing stories, tastes, dislikes – in short, musical culture… […]

Ventoline is an entirely self-produced and self-distributed editorial project that receives no public or private financial support, and has been running for three years thanks to the sale of its issues and a few hectoliters of elbow grease. Everyone contributes on a voluntary basis, according to their desires, means and time. The frequency of each issue is therefore erratic, but this absence of imperatives also proves to be a relief: Ventoline comes out when you can, when you want.

In issue no. 6, the contributors talk “about record collecting. Algerians, unloved instruments, Mexican narco-culture, euphoria and mourning of concerts, a heterotopic club of dykes, Moldavian tradition, and even motherhood – who knows!”

The text typeface in this feature is GR10. The blackletter used for the headline is Neue Theuerdank Fraktur.

Contents (“sommaire”) ft. Spider Panic and Optima with faux small caps and faux italics. The numbers are from GST Aero; the text at the top is set in OCR-X.

Insitu in two columns for text, with Tekton for the headline and emphasis

Body copy is set in Glasgow. The quote uses Modern Blackletter and the bold extended grot is OPS Facitype.

More text in GR10, paired with drop caps from Neue Theuerdank Fraktur and some Ober-Türkheim.

Verona on an angled baseline, with body text in Figure Monospace. The sans used for the lines on a steep angle appears to be ES Allianz.

The poster (50×34 cm) included in Ventoline no. 6 is a transcript of a TV interview with Edith Massey, a.k.a. the Egg Lady, actress and friend of John Waters, and performer of two punk rock hits including “Punks, Get Off the Grass”. The display typeface is Lyric Stencil NF, slanted, paired with more Figure Monospace.

On the left: Produkt and Glasgow Italic with headlines in obliqued Optima. On the right: WS Naive with triple contour and replies in Routed Gothic.

More of the interview in Produkt and Routed Gothic

Frankfurter Medium (left) and ITC Souvenir Italic (right), with big type in IM Fell DW Pica Italic and Lyric Stencil NF

The box on the bottom left of the right page is set in EB Garamond. The colophon in OCR-X additionally mentions Eccles and Hershey Times, but these fonts don’t seem to be shown in the images included here. Jakob, Aston Script and Flash represent a mirrored reproduction of an exhibition poster, and Harrington (“Club Ventoline”) appears to belong to a previous design, too – these aren’t listed under the fonts used for the design of this zine.

Philobiblon, vol. VII, no. 5

Philobiblon was a bibliophile journal from Vienna, published by Herbert Reichner (1899–1971) from 1928 to 1936. After the Anschluss – the annexation of Austria into the German Reich in 1938 – it was taken over and continued by the nationalist Rudolf M. Rohrer Verlag. As opponents of the Nazi regime and as Jews, Reichner and his wife had to flee the country. They first went to Switzerland on 13 March 1938, and further to the USA in 1939. Herbert Reichner opened an antiquarian bookshop in Manhattan. In 1956, he moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where he continued to run his bookshop.

In 1934, the cover of the “magazine for book-collectors” featured Wallau. The original halbfett style of Rudolf Koch’s rotunda interpretation was first cast by Klingspor in 1930. Early adverts for the typeface show it with an angled i dot, like on the Philobiblon cover. From around 1934, this detail was changed to a short horizontal stroke.

The advert by Maggs Bros. is set in four sizes of Tiemann-Antiqua-Kursiv, featuring its alternate swash caps for M, P, and A. Walter Tiemann’s eponymous roman is also a typeface by Klingspor. The italic was released in 1925.

Philobiblon, vol. VII, no. 8

The Holländer Hof is a hotel in Heidelberg’s Old Town, located directly at the Old Bridge across the Neckar. There is evidence of an inn on this site as early as the late 16th century. The current name – “the Dutch(man’s) Inn” was introduced by Louis Spitz in 1836, as Dutch boatsmen and travellers formed the majority of the guests at the time.

The vinyl letters on the window above the entrance are from Claudius, or Claudius-Fraktur, a typeface based on calligraphic samples by Rudolf Koch. His son Paul finished a first cut in the early 1930s and used it in the printing workshop that he ran together with his sister Ursula in the Haus zum Fürsteneck. Further cuts were added by the Klingspor foundry, and the typeface released in 1937 – three years after Rudolf Koch had died. The typeface is named after the German poet Matthias Claudius.

Oriol Miró points out that the t was dully manipulated, compare to the specimen below. The lettering could date from around 1981, when the building was reopened as a hotel after extensive renovation work, having previously served as a Christian hospice.

Preliminary proof for a specimen of Claudius-Fraktur, showing the full character set of the metal foundry type in the 40 pt (Didot) size, handset by Farida Sunada of Ophelia Press and printed by Gerald Lange of the Bieler Press

Collector’s edition of David Lowery’s The Green Knight by A24. Design by Actual Source (Davis Ngarupe and JP Haynie) using Weiß-Gotisch (Delbanco’s digitization) and Almost Roman (Poem). Drawings by Sophy Hollington. Creative direction with David Lowery.

Cover for the an issue of the German trade journal Archiv für Buchgewerbe und Gebrauchsgraphik dedicated to religious graphics, published in summer 1935.

From the contents (translated):

Otto Lerche: The Deutsches Evangelisches Gesangsbuch (German Protestant Hymnal) – a major task for the book trade and book artists of our time
Walter Hofmann: The graphic artist as a designer of religious sentiment
Richard Schuppe: Printing and decoration of the Protestant Hymnal
F. Otto Bringezu: The music writer Paul Koch
Richard Schuppe: The Bible exhibition in the Francke Foundations in Halle an der Saale

The cover design is by Walter Hofmann, Leipzig, using Wallau halbfett with its “unzial”, i.e. Roman, capitals, in combination with the Rotunda-like lowercase, set with ample letterspacing. This original style of Wallau was designed by Rudolf Koch between 1925 and 1930 and released with the Klingspor foundry.

Koch (1876–1934) himself was interested in the renewal of ecclesiastical arts and crafts, and worked on many commissions from Protestant churches. According to Wikipedia, he worked on logos and ceilings and designed candlesticks, paraments, communion vessels and other objects for church furnishings. The Offenbach Friedenskirche, of which he was a parishioner and churchwarden, benefited in particular from this. Wallau is named after a town in the Ländchen, which was a purely Protestant territory well into the 20th century.

Typesetting and printing by Breitkopf & Härtel, binding by Sieke-Fritzsche-Hager G.m.b.H. The paper was provided by Ferdinand Flinsch and the ink by Berger & Wirth, all located in Leipzig.

From the Slanted website :

Karl-Heinz Drescher (1936–2011) was a graphic designer who worked for almost 40 years at the world famous Berliner Ensemble theater of Bertolt Brecht. His catalog of works today comprises over 400 posters, about a third of which are printed by letterpress.

Drescher had a knack for boldly mixing different sans serif fonts: in this 1980 poster, Futura (for the word Deutsch and the Berliner Ensemble logo) is paired with Neuzeit-Grotesk (with the alternate a and u, for the cascading text in the central column) — see Markus Lange’s wonderful book Karl-Heinz Drescher—Berlin Typo Posters, Texts, and Interviews (2020) for more eye-watering examples.

This originally came from having to work with what was at hand in the type shop, though it is a habit Drescher kept even when using photographic enlargements of typefaces not available in the desired sizes. This may be the case here for the title at the top: the blackletter type (Fette Mainzer Fraktur) and the line in Futura Bold may have been copied and blown up from samples found in type catalogues.

[Many thanks to the ever-reliable Dan Reynolds for helping me to identify Fette Mainzer Fraktur.]

Source: smirk1.bandcamp.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Front cover (Drunken Sailor Records)

Smirk a.k.a. Nick Vicario is a punk musician from Los Angeles, also known from Public Eye. LP is the title of his first album under this name, mastered at North London Bomb Factory and released in March 2021 – through Feel It Records in the U.S., and through Drunken Sailor Records in the U.K.

Art and layout by Smoking Room, who combined two typefaces by Rudolf Koch: his multiline Prisma, slanted, and the Rotunda-like Wallau, here in its halbfett (bold) weight with “German capitals”, i.e. with the blackletter alternates. The specific font is Wallau Deutsch, a digitization with soft contours made by Dieter Steffmann in 2002. The hook in I was trimmed, so that it looks less like a J. Steffmann also offers a freebie digitization of Prisma.

[More info on Discogs]

Source: www.discogs.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Front cover (Feel It Records)

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Back cover (Feel It Records)

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A-side (Feel It Records)

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B-side (Feel It Records)

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Limited edition 12″ black vinyl (Drunken Sailor Records)

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Limited edition 12″ red vinyl (Drunken Sailor Records)

Das Volk (“The People”) was a newspaper for the Social Democratic Party of Thuringia, Germany, published in 1926. The display typefaces are Extrafette Bernhard-Fraktur (published in 1921) and Enge Jaecker-Schrift (published in 1912). The text is set in an unidentified standard fraktur, see Normal-Fraktur.

Supplement Für unsere Jugend (“For our youth”)

Jugendstil meets blackletter: this ad was part of an insert included with Archiv für Buchgewerbe, vol. 49, no. 11/12 from November/December 1912. The featured typeface is Jaecker-Schrift, named after its designer Wilhelm Jaecker. The Stempel foundry in Frankfurt released it shortly before, in four styles; regular, mager (light), eng (condensed), and halbfett (bold).

Wilhelm Jaecker was born in Rehme and studied at the Barmer Kunstgewerbeschule, which was established in 1894 as one of the new schools in the spirit of the Arts and Crafts movement. In 1912, Jaecker worked as a young book artist and calligrapher in Leipzig.

In an article from 1925, thirteen years and one world war later, Emil Wetzig described Jaecker-Schrift as a pronounced broad-nib design of Gothic character, with handwritten qualities that could not be blurred even by being cut in metal. It is broad and open, with easily legible letters and capitals that are devoid of any of the ornamental additions that one encounters in monastic manuscripts. Its designer deliberately avoided handwritten pomp in order to clear the way for his creation to meet the manifold needs of the printer. Wetzig finds it particularly well suited for job work, but less so as book typeface.

Jaecker-Schrift came accompanied by swash initials, ornamental borders, decorative elements (Zierrat) and vignettes. The ornaments and borders used in the ad seem to be taken from another, yet unidentified source, though. “Union” sports one of the swash terminal alternates included in the font. “Verlagsgesellschaft” shows three different forms for one letter: the “round” s at the end of the first word in the composite, the long ſ, and a variant of the latter to go with the ligated ch pair – chances are Stempel provided a single glyph for this trigraph that’s common in German spelling.

Union Deutsche Verlagsanstalt was a German publishing house founded in Stuttgart in 1890. It was well known for books addressing a juvenile audience, including works by Karl May, or Else Ury’s Nesthäkchen. The ad doesn’t promote a specific title, but is generally about their “Schriften für die deutsche Jugend”, literally “Writings for the German Youth”. The title’s nationalist angle is echoed by the vignette depicting an oak tree seedling.

Ornamente, Vignetten, Initialen und Zierrat zur Jaecker-Schrift. Reproduced from Alphabet Ornamente, a specimen booklet with typefaces and ornaments for typographic designs by the D. Stempel AG, compiled by the Typographiche Vereinigung Leipzig.

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.

Promise me that you will finally take Sanatogen now.

Mainzer Fraktur in use for an ad for Sanatogen, a “restorative agent for body and nerves endorsed by 16,000 physicians”. Note the use of Ae instead of Ä in “Aerzten”: In capitals, umlauts were often dissolved to A/O/U + e.

From Wikipedia:

Sanatogen was a “brain tonic” invented by the Bauer Chemical Company, in Germany in 1898 and sold worldwide. In the US it was advertised as a “nerve revitaliser”.

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“Herzlichen Glückwunsch zur Hochzeit” from G. Schröder and family.

This series of wedding cards from 1919 was posted on Altpapiersammler’s Flickr stream, a treasure trove of (mostly) German ephemera. The generic greeting cards all have about the same format, they all show a single typeface in two or three sizes, they all say “Herzlichen Glückwunsch” (“Congratulations”), followed by the name of the sender. They are framed by some decorative embossing, and were all personalized with handwritten additions in Kurrentschrift, like “zur Hochzeit” (“on your wedding”).

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Detail. For some reason, the typesetter used ligatures for the two ch pairs, but not for ck.

The typeface used on the first card is a narrow Textura cut by Friedrich Wilhelm Bauer in 1876, named Accidenz Gothisch schmal (later spelled Akzidenz-Gotisch schmal). Akzidenzen are, literally, “things that occur”. In the German printing trade, it’s the traditional term used for everything that’s not a book or some other text-heavy publication; for example invitations, birth announcements, business cards, ads, flyers, etc. Akzidenz-Schriften thus are typefaces suitable for these kind of jobs — “jobbing typefaces” is an English equivalent. In the days of metal type, they were sold in smaller quantities than Werkschriften (body types). Stylistically, Akzidenz-Schriften are often ornamented (outlined, open, shaded, floriated, etc.) or otherwise fancy in some way, but that’s not a requirement, as one can see in the famous Akzidenz-Grotesk. Size isn’t the defining criterion either: some were cast in sizes as small as 4pt. One could say that every display typeface is a jobbing typeface, but not every jobbing typeface is meant for display sizes.

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Greeting card with finely embossed branches and ornaments, sent by Thea Wilkens and Rudolf Paulsen from Heide, Schleswig-Holstein.

The open sans on the second card is Sezessions-Grotesk licht, issued by the Julius Klinkhardt foundry in Leipzig around 1903. The Sezessions-Grotesk series comprises a number of styles and was also cast by other foundries, including Stephenson Blake in England (as Arabian). Just like similar releases by Berthold or Ludwig & Mayer from the turn of the century, this Jugendstil sans serif was named in reference to the Secession art movement in Munich, Vienna, and elsewhere.

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Detail.

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“Herzlichen Glückwunsch zur Hochzeit u[nd] beste Grüße!” (“Congratulations on the wedding and best wishes!”) by August and Martha Burmeister from Marne, Schleswig-Holstein.

The third card uses an italic with swash caps. Designed by Heinrich Wieynck, it was first cast by the Bauer foundry in 1911, as Wieynck-Kursiv. In the 1970s, Letraset revived the design as Phyllis, which is the name that Bauer had used for markets abroad. Phyllis is used with ſ (long s) and ligatures for ch, ck, and ſt, as it was still common at the time.

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Detail.

First published by Schuster & Loeffler in 1910, this is a later edition of Der Hahn von Quakenbrück and other novellas by Ricarda Huch (1864–1947), from 1920. The cover typography pairs Walbaum Italic in all caps with Rudolf Koch’s Maximilian.

Rhapsodie in use for the sign of Antik Galerie, an antique shop in Darmstadt, Germany.

This typeface, which can be categorized as an upright cursive fraktur or a bastarda, is remarkable in two regards. Rhapsodie was first cast by Ludwig & Mayer in Frankfurt am Main (just 35 km north of Darmstadt) in 1951. At that time, it was one of only a handful of typefaces designed by women. It’s the work of Ilse Schüle. Born in 1903 as Ilse Bentel, the designer studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Stuttgart with F.H. Ernst Schneidler, worked as his assistant and started teaching at that school herself, too. After becoming the mother of twins in 1930 she continued her work as freelance graphic artist and designed numerous book jackets and covers for Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. Ilse Schüle died in 1997. Rhapsodie is her only published typeface design. About the only other women-designed typefaces available in Germany in the early 1950s were Elizabeth by Elizabeth Friedlander, Diotima and Smaragd by Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse, Ballé-Initialen by Maria Ballé, and Montan by Anna Maria Schildbach.

Rhapsodie is also a rare example for a blackletter design issued as foundry type after World War II. The other contemporary German releases in this classification group that I can think of were started before 1945 – and before the infamous Schrifterlass from 1941 in which the Nazis defamed blackletter as a Jewish conspiracy, effectively banning fraktur and related styles from official use – and only picked up again after the end of the Nazi regime. This includes Hermann Zapf’s Gilgengart (1950, designed in 1939–1940) and Hans Kühne’s Kühne-Schrift (1954, conceived before 1941). I don’t know when Kühne’s Andreas-Schrift (1948/1954) was started.

With its capitals that are less intricate than many other fraktur typefaces, Rhapsodie is easily readable even for people not accustomed to blackletter. The design with relatively wide proportions and long extenders is accompanied by a second set of decorated swash capitals. These are stylistically even closer to roman cursive forms, see e.g. A, G, M, V, or Z, and were also utilized for the Antik-Galerie sign.

Glyph set with swash caps from a 20-page type specimen booklet, published by the Ludwig & Mayer foundry in Frankfurt am Main. The caps are separated by dingbats from Schüle-Schmuck, a set of ornaments that accompanied Rhapsodie.

Calligraphy sample (“Geschriebene deutsche Schrift”) by Ilse Bentel. Reproduced in Gebrauchsgraphik, vol. 2, no. 1 from 1925, a special issue about “Schrift und Schriftschreiber”, as part of a series of works that originated at the Kunstgewerbeschule Stuttgart.

Certificate with calligraphy by Ilse Schüle, featuring a style that can be regarded as a precursor of Rhapsodie. Reproduced in Archiv für Buchgewerbe und Gebrauchsgraphik, vol. 71, no. 11 from 1934, a special issue dedicated to “young German book artists”. The certificate’s text is tainted by the nationalist pathos of 1930s Germany. Issued in the name of the Prime Minister of Württemberg, it congratulates parents to the birth of their seventh daughter (an attitude that later materialized in the Mutterkreuz) and wishes that “she and all her siblings may grow up to be brave Germans”.