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

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.

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.

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 typeface in Elophe Poirson’s label appears to be a version of (Alte) Schwabacher, used with a long s in “Poirſon”. It’s thinner than most digitizations and has a different letter E.

Elophe Poirson (1840–1918) was a violin maker in Lyon. According to René Vannes, his production, which spans from 1876 to 1918, is estimated at around 300 instruments. [Viaduct Violins]

A full-page ad in a German publication from 1901, singing the praises of sugar:

Enjoy sugar, not only because it increases the pleasant taste, but rather because it is a valuable food and at the same time cheaper than other nutrients such as fat and protein.

The middle part details how to enjoy sugar: in tea and coffee, in all milk and water soups, in all hard to digest vegetables and salads, on bread (in the form of jam, as cheap substitute for butter), in the form of preserved fruits, and, for breastfeeding women, in malt beer.

The bottom part addresses “smart mothers” and “smart housewives”. The former are asked not to deprive their children of sugar:

It is a wise institution of nature that children crave sweet foods and drinks; it is as if they know it that they cannot thrive without sugar.

The headline features Renaissance-Fraktur with an ß (eszett), a compact ck ligature, and a swashy r at the end. While the text directly below uses an Alte Schwabacher (starring umlauts with superscript e’s), all smaller text is set in a Neue Schwabacher, with a bold weight used for emphasis. The heading next to the numbered list combines this bold Neue Schwabacher with a question mark from Gloria schmal halbfett.

“Zucker / Zucker / Zucker” and the triple-underlined “Kluge Mütter / Kluge Hausfrauen” are set in Stempel’s Morris-Gotisch. This adaptation of Morris Troy is distinguished from William Morris’s original – as well as from other German releases under the same name including those by Berthold and Ludwig & Mayer – by a different g. It also sports an uncial-like M which might be unique to the Stempel version.

Tightly spaced caps from Cooper Black, the typeface “for far-sighted printers with near-sighted customers”, mounted on the façade of what used to be the “Shoe Express” in Gera, Thuringia, and probably dating from the GDR days.

More recently, the building housed Schuhservice „Thomas Müntzer“, a company focusing on orthopedic shoe technology. Their shop window lettering is worth a look, too. The name of the company’s patron, a prominent figure of the German Reformation, is fittingly set in Alte Schwabacher. This typeface, like most blackletter designs, comes with two forms for s; the round one and the long one (ſ). This application shows neither. Chances are the specific font in use offered an ſ as the default glyph. The sign maker didn’t like that, or was aware that this form isn’t meant to be used in final position. Since they couldn’t locate the alternate round form – in pre-OpenType fonts like URW’s, it’s hidden under the number sign (#) code point – they went with a a scaled-down capital form (S).

Spotted by Monsier Adrien in August 2022.

Detail

Detail

Ad for the Töchter-Pensionat Luisen-Institut in Bad Kreuznach, 1906

Two illustrated print ads for boarding schools from 1906.

The one shown above is for the Luisen-Institut in Bad Kreuznach (then in the Kingdom of Prussia’s Rhine Province) – an “excellently recommended finishing school for daughters” offering “thorough scientific and domestic training in addition to solid education” with the “opportunity for exams in handicraft and language as well as higher teacher’s exams”. The annual fee of 900 ℳ included access to the big garden and brine baths.

The headline is set in one of the German versions of Bradley, without ch ligature, underlined and with lowered caps. “Luisen-Institut” is in a Fette Schwabacher (with double hyphen), “Töchter-Pensionat” in a Breite Gotisch, with single hyphen and ligatures for ch and ſi. The copy is set in a generic Fraktur, with Schwabacher for emphasis. The only roman type is the fat face used for highlighting the principal’s name.

The advert shown below is for another Pensionat in Gotha (then part of the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha). It plugs the “beautiful villa with big garden” and its “certified in-house instructors from Paris and England”, and promises “excellent teaching and preparation for the Prussian teacher’s exam”.

The design features several of the typefaces mentioned above, in different roles. Breite Gotisch is here used for the biggest line, accompanied by the number and “Penſionat” in Eckmann-Schrift. Note that Eckmann came with dedicated glyphs for the Roman numerals Ⅰ Ⅴ Ⅹ that were different in design from its capital letters I V X. Bradley appears for the principals’ names, with ſ (long s) and ü.

Ad for the Pensionat Gotha III, 1906

Cover of a booklet with the program for a ceremony, commemorative play, and folk festival, organized in August 1954 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Sankt Gallen joining the Swiss Confederacy in 1454.

The red blackletter is some sort of (Alte) Schwabacher. An appropriate choice: Types like this dominated German printing in the late 15th and early 16th century. Most foundries in the German-speaking world had a version. It’s not Nürnberger Schwabacher (1927) by the Swiss foundry Haas, though. C.F. Rühl’s cut come pretty close, but isn’t a cigar either. Most of the digitally available options are a tad more regularized, with a straight middle vertical in G, or a less left-leaning F. The best match I’ve found is Gerhard Helzel’s Alte Schwabacher 20pt, which was digitized from type by Offizin Andersen-Nexö, a Leipzig-based book printer that emerged from the Offizin Drugulin, which in turn continued the type foundry established by Friedrich Nies in 1831. I wonder if this is the same Schwabacher (albeit a different size) as Jan Tschichold used for his 1956 letterhead.

The black lines are set in caps from Times New Roman. It looks quite classy in letterpres, doesn’t it? Haas produced a foundry version under license from Monotype.

The seal depicts the heraldic animal of St. Gallen. The bear belongs to the insignia of Saint Gall, the founder and patron saint of the city. Legend has it that Gallus ordered an unexpectedly emerging bear to throw wood into the fire. Then, as a reward, he was given a loaf of bread with the instruction never to return to the Steinach river.

The letters on the seal are hand-drawn, of course. Around 1900, Otto Hupp designed Numismatisch, a typeface specifically made for reproducing the lettering on such mediaeval seals, coins, and similar items.

“Ein schweres, sorgenvolles Jahr ging zu Ende! Doch hoffnungsfreudig übermitteln wir hiermit die besten Wünsche zum Jahreswechsel. Möge der unglückselige Weltkrieg im neuen Jahre sein wohlverdientes Ende finden und damit eine neue, glückliche Zeit anbrechen.”

[A difficult, worried year came to an end! But full of hope, we hereby convey the best wishes for the turn of the year. May the new year bring a well-deserved end to the unfortunate world war and thus mark the start of new, happy times.]

In: Typographische Mitteilungen, Vol. 14, Issue 2, February 1917

I was surprised to see that in the mid-1950s, Jan Tschichold used Alte Schwabacher as the typeface for his personal letterhead. This letter from October 1956 is addressed to Rudolf Hostettler. The year before, Tschichold moved back to Basel to work for Hoffmann-La Roche.

It is not the cut by Benjamin Krebs Nachfahren – the figures don’t match. None of the digitally available Alte Schwabachers is a match either, as far as I can tell. The only digital versions with old-style figures are IHOF’s distressed SchwarzKopf and RMU’s Schwabacher, but they are very different.

Spotted in the exhibition Einige von Hand geschriebene Briefe (“Several letters written by hand”), with a selection from Jost Hochuli’s private collection of c. 400 letters, including items sent from and to Walter Käch, Paul Standard, Gerrit Noordzij and several others. On display during Tÿpo St. Gallen 2013 (see the invitation as pdf).

Most blackletter signs and inscriptions in the streets of St. Gallen are not derived from typefaces, but are custom lettering work. “Gallery The Ostrich” is one of the few exceptions — it uses Alte Schwabacher. This is one the most popular digital blackletter fonts, along with Fette Fraktur, Fette Gotisch, Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch, Old English and Engravers’ Old English.

Re:publica is an annual conference that deals with web-related topics like blogging, social media, digital society, and web politics. On the occasion of re:publica 13 which opened its doors in Berlin today, Wortfeld has published a series of historic conference posters, claiming that they were discovered “in the attic of the state archives in Berlin-Dahlem”. The posters purportedly prove that the roots of re:publica go back not only to 2007, but actually a full hundred years, when “engineers, artists, painters and musicians first met in a Berlin machine factory in 1913, under the wary eyes of the Prussian secret police”.

Although there are a couple of details that challenge their authenticity, the posters do a remarkable job at emulating the various historic styles of graphic design. It’s obvious that the designer(s) had lots of fun with these.
The images were published under a CC-by license.

While all genres here are more or less historically accurate, this spoof is easily detectable: The Art Nouveau letterforms by Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928) were not made into a typeface before 1996, when Phil Grimshaw digitized them as ITC Rennie Mackintosh. Also, such a combination of Jugendstil and blackletter was rather unusual.

Bonus points for correctly using the two forms of ‘s’ in ‘Diskuſſion’! (However, ‘Maſchinenfabrik’ would have needed a ‘long s’, too.)

Berthold Block is a very plausible choice for a German interwar poster. The condensed weights were not released before 1920, though.

Constructivist typography similar to the works of El Lissitzky or Jan Tschichold, featuring the rarely seen P22 DeStijl Stencil. Erbar-Grotesk schmalhalbfett was not available before 1929, but this still feels pretty correct.

The 1928 poster is a nod to Kurt Schwitters and his MERZ collages, with a mix of Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch, Akzidenz-Grotesk, some more Rennie Mackintosh, Block, Futura – and Adobe Garamond (1989).

This one is great! Every design that uses Reporter is great. The secondary typeface is Alternate Gothic No. 2.

Roger Excoffon’s Banco (1951) and Hermann Zapf’s Optima Bold (1968) – almost. Fun fact: A specimen for Optima showed an airplane, too.

This poster feels the least authentic to me. Yes, Helvetica was already released in 1958 (at least the regular weight). Yes, multi-color photographic reproduction was possible, theoretically. The devil is in the details: the spacing – word spaces in particular – is way too wide for a pre-digital poster design.

The 1963 edition is more credible: an economical one-color print with a coarse half tone image.

Helvetica again, now paired with Times Extra Bold – looks quite authentic. But would they really have used the term ‘Westberlin’?

ITC Lubalin Graph was released in 1974, but apart from that, this is another good one. ITC Avant Garde Gothic really shines with that rainbow. Minor quibble: It looks more like a paperback cover than a poster.

Futura Extra Bold Condensed, tightly spaced and with heavy underlines – spot on for Germany anno 1978, cf. this poster by Klaus Staeck.

More Futura Condensed, now in several weights and all caps. Complete with a reference to the “Btx-Leitseite” – hilarious!

The 1988 poster features various styles of ITC Franklin Gothic. With the contrasty color blocks and the pipes as date separators, it successfully establishes a late eighties/early nineties atmosphere.

Props for using the actual Lucky Strike typeface here: This is Concorde, not Times New Roman.

Emigre’s Mrs Eaves indeed was an ubiquitous typeface in the late 1990s. Here it is paired with Akzidenz-Grotesk.

Last but not least, this is FF DIN Alternate (featuring the narrow C), with roughened contours.

Back in 1981, Deutsche Bundespost – the West German postal authority – not only deemed blackletter a suitable genre for stamps. They also had graphic artists who knew when to use the long ſ (in initial and medial position) and when to use the round s (only at the end of morphemes).

The image depicting the Nativity of Jesus is a reproduction of a reverse glass painting from Sandl, Austria, c. 1840.