Eichmann. Symbool van een regime by Charles Wighton (Prisma Boeken)

Eichmann: His Career and Crimes is a book about Adolf Eichmann, one of the major organisers of the Holocaust. It was written by Charles Wighton (1913–?), a Scottish journalist who reported from post-war Germany, began studying Nazi war crimes, and attended the Nuremberg trials. The book was published in 1961, the year in which Eichmann was trialed in Jerusalem. Shown here is the cover of the Dutch edition, translated by A.J. Richel and published by Uitgeverij Het Spectrum in the Prisma Boeken imprint.

The haunting portrait depicts the SS officer in his uniform, with a face composed of dead bodies of Holocaust victims. The cover is signed “DOBE” or similar.

The typeface used for “Eichmann” is Mosaik. It’s the only published typeface design by Martin Kausche (1915–2007). Born in Stettin, he studied under F.H. Ernst Schneidler in Stuttgart and later in Berlin. From 1941, Kausche worked for the Organisation Todt. After the war, he settled in the Worpswede artist colony and designed book jackets for S. Fischer, among other publishers. His Mosaik was first cast in 1954, years after the Nazi regime was terminated. Stylistically the design has nothing to do with the simplified Gotischs that became popular in the 1930s. Stempel advertised it as “the latest manifestation of the uncial idea”. Why was it selected for this grim topic, then? It’s probably because Mosaik can still be commonly read as being linked to the German lettering tradition informed by blackletter, with its gnarly strokes and outmoded ductus for some glyphs. But unlike most proper broken script typefaces, it’s easily readable to a Dutch audience.

Today marks the 79th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet troops on 27 January 1945.