Most of the cover type is set in Erbar-Grotesk halbfett – with the exception of the year 1932 and the house numbers 11 and 12: these are added from Futura fett. Maybe the printer didn’t have numerals in these sizes at hand. The oldstyle roman is Tiemann-Mediäval.

This posts features selected pages from the guide published for the Mitteldeutsche Funk- und Phono-Schau that took place in Leipzig in the fall of 1932, including the front and back covers and a number of interior pages, with infographics and adverts.

We get to see a range of period typefaces, all released by German foundries in the first third of the 20th century. The oldest one among them is Aviso, which appears for the labels on page 23, listing commonly used electrical circuit symbols. Aviso was first cast by Berthold in 1903. The monolinear italic might have been chosen for its similarity to DIN 16, the standard letterforms used in technical drawings. See the captions for more notes on the type.

The printing – and probably also the design – was done by Leipziger Buchdruckerei AG, a local company with ties to the Social Democrats.

The “Central German Radio and Phono Show” was the third major radio exhibition by the Leipzig chapter of the Arbeiter-Radio-Bund Deutschlands (ARB, “Workers’ Radio Federation of Germany”). In the foreword, the organizers write (translated):

Despite the severe economic crisis, the ARB has taken it upon itself to organize this exhibition. Since the last major exhibition (ARA 1928), transmission and reception technology have seen an upward trend that shows no signs of slowing down. This exhibition is intended to be more than just a promotional and sales event. It aims to introduce the layperson to the wide-ranging and fascinating field of radio technology. The technical processes are explained to visitors in a simple manner, organized into educational groups, using models and practical demonstrations. For the ARB, the goal is to familiarize listeners with the technical processes involved in radio broadcasting. The dissemination of technical knowledge is a cultural endeavor that should not be underestimated and forms the foundation for the ARB’s cultural mission.

The inner cover advertises capacitors, transformers and other parts to DIYers who build their own radios. It uses the same typefaces, with a headline in Energos. The monolinear sript was first cast by Schriftguss in 1932, making it the youngest one used in this booklet.

The text typeface is Säculum. Note the use of tracking for emphasis at the beginning of the last paragraph. The heading uses Erbar-Grotesk with a ch ligature and the standard German quote marks.

The ad by Ludwig Fries relies on Erbar-Grotesk’s space-saving schmalhalbfett style.

The electrical symbols, labeled in Aviso

Tables with values for the electrical resistance of various types of wire and the weight of one meter of wire

Ohm’s law and a formula for calculating the power handling capacity of resistors

The ad for radio journal Die Mirag pairs Energos with two weights of Erbar-Grotesk. The copy is in the Zweite Garnitur that is distinguished by a shorter x-height.

More Energos with Erbar and Tiemann-Mediäval for an by Radio-Schnorr. The logo at the top has handdrawn letters.

Schaub’s ad introduces Kreß-Versalien. The arrow was composed from several sorts, see the small gaps between them.

The Telefunken ad on the back cover uses Futura together with Signal. This script typeface was first cast by Berthold in 1931, one year before Energos.

Gilgamesch is a comedy in five acts by expressionist playwright Julius Maria Becker (1887–1949). This title page from a book published by the Verlag der Gesellschaft für Literatur und Bühnenkunst in 1928 uses Rudolf Koch’s Maximilian-Antiqua for the title. The line below is set in the bold weight of a typeface that originated at Wagner & Schmidt and went under various names, see Lipsia-Antiqua. In further roles: Tiemann-Mediäval and one of the German versions of Edina.

Many German publishers – especially such who offer sheet music – loved Walter Tiemann’s Tiemann-Mediäval, like Schott, Peters, and Bärenreiter. This title page for Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Die tote Stadt is an obvious example. It was first published by B. Schott’s Söhne, today known as Schott Music, in 1920. “DIE TOTE STADT” is set in Tiemann-Mediäval regular, and all other text on this page uses Tiemann-Mediäval italic.

Die tote Stadt (The Dead City), Op. 12, is an opera in three acts by Erich Wolfgang Korngold set to a libretto by Paul Schott, a collective pseudonym for the composer and his father, Julius Korngold. It is based on the 1892 novel Bruges-la-Morte by Georges Rodenbach.

This is the cover of an catalog published after 1914 by a leading violin-making factory in Paris. “CARESSA & FRANÇAIS” and “TÉLÉPHONE: Wagram 95-56” are set in bold Tiemann-Mediäval. All other text on this page (“12 Rue de Madrid — PARIS” and “LUTHIERS DU CONSERVATOIRE NATIONAL DE MUSIQUE”) use French Oldstyle, which was a very popular typeface at the time.

Caressa & Français was founded in 1901 by Albert Caressa and Henri Français, both of whom had worked for Gand & Bernardel of Paris (founded in 1866). Caressa was the manager of Gand & Bernardel and Français was Gustave Bernardel’s favorite worker. They eventually succeeded (and purchased) the House of Gustave Bernardel, Luthiers du Conservatoire de musique (Luthiers of the National Conservatory of Music).

Over the course of its lifetime this shop became a leading international centre for rare string instruments and was patronized by many of the preeminent names in the concert world. After Français’s retirement in 1920, the factory was taken over by Caressa and changed its name to Maison Albert Caressa (the House of Albert Caressa), and this eventually became the House of Emile Français (son of Henri Français) in 1938. The factory closed in 1981.

See more pages from the catalog on the website of J.P. Cognier – R. Terrier (Luthiers Mirecourt).

Many German publishers – especially such who offer sheet music – loved Tiemann-Mediäval, like Schott and Peters. This title page for Arnold Schönberg’s Fünf Orchesterstücke (Five Pieces for Orchestra) is an obvious example. It was first published by C. F. Peters, today known as Edition Peters, in 1913. This copy appears to be from a later date, issued after the publisher relocated to Frankfurt am Main in 1950.

The indestructible Berthold Block and the filigree Tiemann-Antiqua, combined in an ad for Creme Elcaya, “the most exquisite skin care product […] excellent in summer for travelling, for marches and automobile rides, […] indispensable in winter”.

Designed by Hermann Hoffmann and released by Berthold in 1908, Block came with a number of narrow alternates that helped to justify a block of text, hence the name. “CREME ELCAYA” shows both the wide and the narrow form of E. Can you spot the two variants of S?

Walter Tiemann’s eponymous Antiqua was first cast by Klingspor in 1909. Its Kursiv – which is here used for captions – followed in 1912. “Erste Deutsche Fabrik …” is set in a narrow grotesk that was known as Moderne Steinschrift, among other names. The advert measures 43 cm in height.

Poster for an exhibition in Egmond aan Zee near Amsterdam, 1912. Topic unknown. From one of the the big tents that are mounted at the beach, four horses pull a boat on a carriage, followed by an apparently enthusiastic crowd.

This one is for editor Florian, who hopefully is having encounters with Egmond locals who are not too shy for eye contact, unlike the traditional woman with headscarf in the foreground.

Instead of using local type like the (just released?) Hollandse Mediaeval, the designer or printer opted for a German design with similar character: All caps Tiemann-Mediaeval is used for the title. The date is set in type that looks similar to Romanisch.

Size: 400×510 mm. Lithography printed by Gebr. Binger, Amsterdam.

Photo: Florian Hardwig. License: CC BY-NC-SA.

Here’s some more Tiemann-Mediäval, on the letterhead of Hugo Daniel, owner of a factory for copper kettles and pan furnaces in Schlotheim, Thuringia, and an associated copper hammer mill in Rauda.

The regular weight of the Mediäval was only the second of two dozen typefaces designed by Walter Tiemann (1876–1951) – and the first to be released publicly in 1909 – following his debut created in 1907 for the exclusive use by the Janus-Presse, the first German private press modeled after the English Doves Press, founded the same year by Tiemann together with Carl Ernst Poeschel in Leipzig.

Photo: Florian Hardwig. License: CC BY-NC-SA.

A comparison of Janus-Pressen-Schrift (private, 1907, left) and Tiemann-Mediäval (Klingspor, 1909, right). Note that the two samples show neither the same size nor reproduction method.

The Janus-Pressen-Schrift, like many of the faces spawned by the private press movement, harks back to the early roman types from Italy, which were considered a lost ideal. Tiemann-Mediäval can be described as a second, more personal take on the same genre, again picking up several characteristics of the Venetian Oldstyle incl. the angled ‘e’, but with a smaller x-height and some peculiar letterforms like the ‘bdpq’ group distinguished by their semicircle bowls.

The letterhead is set in the halbfett, added in 1911. In this bold weight, the problems in two questionable letterforms are intensified. The ‘g’ with its knobby middle part and the ‘u’ with the (unique?) symmetrically seriffed base suffer from crowding. One is inclined to say that no one’s born a master, but these letters had been solved just fine in the earlier Janus-Pressen-Schrift. Mischievous wags might argue that Tiemann made the commercial release deliberately a little less beautiful because he knew it wouldn’t be used to sing the praises of Diotima on hand-made paper, but rather to market gasoline and kettles.

Photo: Florian Hardwig. License: CC BY-NC-SA.

Back then, ligatures for digraphs like ‘ch’ or ‘ck’ were considered atomic in German typesetting. Even when letterspacing was applied, as in “Postschließfach”, the ligatures were maintained.

The serif used for the smaller text could be Lateinisch, judging from the spurred ‘b’ combined with the angled top serifs on ‘n’ or ‘u’. In the bold, ‘b’ is spurless, though, and hence closer to Schelter & Giesecke’s Romanisch, or one of the faces derived from matrices made by Riegerl, Weißenborn & Co, like Stempel’s Römisch and Schriftguss’s Hamburger Römisch. “Postscheck-Konto” looks like Römisch breit fett (Schriftguss, Trennert) or Propaganda-Romanisch (Stempel).

This invoice by the Leipzig subsidiary of Everth & Co. GmbH, or Euco, a gas station operator and distributor of Monopolin (the brand name of a fuel enriched with potato-based ethanol), benzol, and other gasolines, was issued in 1929. It shows two faces cast by the Gebr. Klingspor foundry in Offenbach, home of the “artist’s typefaces”: Tiemann-Mediäval (1909–12) by Walter Tiemann, and Neuland (1923) by Rudolf Koch. Although the latter was presented as a “Werbeschrift” (and in engineering contexts) in the specimens, it is rather a rare bird in commercial printing. Tiemann-Mediäval, and especially its dainty italics, makes for a great contrasting complement. Neither is an obvious choice for the visual identity of a gasoline distributor, at least not to our contemporary eyes.

The punches for Neuland were manually cut by Rudolf Koch himself, without any previous design on paper, true to the Arts and Crafts ideal of immediate expression — “like in the old days, the inventor of the form and the maker of the punch united in one person” [specimen]. Each size is hence a little different, as one can see in the letter ‘H’ here (36pt and 28pt). Walter Tracy points out that greater differences only occur in letters where the variation doesn’t matter much, which suggests that at least some of them are intentional.

The line for place and date features all three members of the Tiemann-Mediäval family, regular, halbfett and kursiv. The form design allowed for “Herrn” (gentleman) or “Firma” (company) — female customers were not yet envisioned.

Not only was Germany oscillating between Fraktur and Antiqua typography. Handwriting was complicated, too: People learned and used two fundamentally different scripts, “Lateinisch” (roundhand) and “Deutsch” AKA Kurrent (a cursive broken script). The writer of this invoice mixed both styles arbitrarily. The first line reads “Euco-Benzin”, with characteristic Kurrent forms for ‘B’, ‘e’, and ‘z’. The line below reads “Euco-Zechenbenzol”. Now the ‘e’ and the ‘z’ are clearly “lateinisch”, while the ‘ch’ shows “German” letterforms.

The February 1920 issue of Typographische Mitteilungen: Zeitschrift des Bildungsverbandes der Deutschen Buchdrucker (Typographic Messages: The Journal of the Education Association of German Printers) uses Tiemann-Mediäval and Maximilian-Antiqua on its cover.