Gib mir mein Fahrrad wieder by Rudi Carrell

Rudi Carrell (1934–2006) was a Dutch entertainer from Alkmaar, North Holland. After starting his career in the Netherlands, he moved to Germany in the 1960s. There, he succeeded as TV host for game shows and comedy formats, but also had stints as singer and actor. More than three decades on television made Carrell arguably the best-known Dutchman in Germany.

This memoir from 1979 comes with a title that may sound funny – “Give me back my bike” – and the excessive swashes add to the jocular mood. It has a grim background, though. “Eerst mijn fiets terug” (“First my bicycle back”) is a Dutch saying that refers to events in World War II. In 1942, the German occupiers confiscated about 100,000 bicycles from Dutch citizens. In the first two postwar decades, the phrase was used to express a desire for reparations – starting with the beloved bikes – and anti-German sentiment in general. By the time the book came out, it had degenerated into an ironizing joke. From the 1990s onward, “mijn fiets terug” was used mainly as self-mockery – a light-hearted look back at how people had previously viewed the war.

The typeface is a bold display style of the original phototype version of Basta, distinguished from the text version by its narrow proportions. Basta is a design by Georg Salden (b. 1930), who got interested in letterform design through his uncle, Helmut Salden (1910–1996). As an opponent to the Nazis, Helmut fled Germany in 1934, and eventually settled in the Netherlands, not suspecting that the Wehrmacht would soon invade the country. Helmut Salden was arrested in 1942, and condemned to death for desertion. After his sentence was commuted, he survived the war in various prisons and concentration camps. In 1946 he returned to the Netherlands, where he became a prolific book designer and lettering artist. For more about Helmut Salden, see a previous post about the 2018 exhibition at Museum Meermanno.