While the title on the front cover is lettering, the blackletter seen on the back and the flap is Deutsche Schrift, used in two weights with both forms for the letter s (see “Ausſtellungshallen”) and the mandatory ligatures for ch, ck, tz. Note that the S in “S-Bahnhof” was added from a bold roman that approximates the logo glyph. Berthold’s Halbfette Lateinisch is a likely source.

A folder advertising Third Class fares on the Berlin S-Bahn to visit the exhibition grounds and Funkturm adjacent to the city's S-Bahn station at Witzleben. The diagram is interesting in that the system’s stations include the Third Class (3. Klasse) fare to Witzleben from the station of origin.

The folder is not dated but there are some clues and others with sharper eyes and better knowledge than me may offer more information! But the station Deutschlandhalle was named as such from Eichkamp in May 1936, and the Nord-Süd links through the city centre are not shown here; the S-Bahn station at Unter den Linden, shown here, opened in 1936 as the provisional terminus (following the catastrophic collapse of the railway excavations in the locality in 1935) and it was 1939 before the S-Bahn through to Potsdamer Platz was opened.

The folder gives other information including the advice that you can travel to the exhibition grounds by S-Bahn (suburban train, that the exhibition halls at the radio tower (Funkturm) are quick and easy to reach from Witzleben S-Bahn station and that you should purchase your return ticket when you travel to the exhibition grounds.

The folder is printed on stout card and, after some discussion with more knowledgable Berliners, it is likely to be original. It shows no ‘reprint’ data and the folds are well worn suggesting some age. The folder also shows both versions of the S-Bahn symbol or logotype; that of the S in a circle and that of the S in a tombstone shape – the latter being the original design by Fritz Rosen in 1930 that was changed to the circle in c.1936. There is also the Adler or eagle symbol used by the Deutsche Reichsbahn.

The station names aren’t typeset, but written by hand, in an inclined Blockschrift (cf. DIN 16). The fare info underneath the S-Bahn “tombstone” appears to be set in Berthold Block and Akzidenz-Grotesk.

The large black heading is written in a simplified textura. Interestingly, the letterforms don’t really follow the model drawn by Friedling in May 1935 for the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft, nor are they particularly close to any of the typefaces of this genre. The F with vertical, descending stem resembles the one in Element, but other details are off.

Source: bibliotekadigjitale.bksh.al Të gjitha të drejtat të rezervuara © 2006-2020 Biblioteka Kombëtare e Shqipërisë. License: All Rights Reserved.

Interior page from an Albanian booklet from 1907 titled “The Albanian Committee for the Freedom of Albania: canonism”, featuring a font that appears to be a derivative of Berthold’s Lateinisch.

The Mbrothësia (“Progress”) printing press was the first commercial Albanian printing house, operating from 1896 in Sofia, Bulgaria under the management of Kristo Luarasi. It was using an original Albanian alphabet, based on Latin. Until then, the printing house was using mostly French didones for the letters, but since 1907, the printing house changed to German type, as it seems.

The possible Lateinisch used in the publications is modified to accomodate Albanian sounds like ë, ç, dh, th, sh, zh, xh, gj, ll, rr and dh – eleven in total – with some Greek additions, Slavic, as well as some original letters. It has a more peculiar g of monocular form.

See the complete booklet on the website of the National Library of Albania (BKSH).

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).