Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse (1932–1937)

The Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse was the official organ of the International Psychoanalytic Association. Edited by Sigmund Freud in Vienna, it began publication in 1913. Over the years, the journal sported a number of different designs and typefaces. Starting with volume XVIII, no. 1 from 1932, a new typographic design was introduced, featuring Koch-Antiqua.

At least initially, covers and title pages were exclusively set in Rudolf Koch’s roman with the characteristically small x-height, in two weights, mager and grob (bold). Koch-Antiqua is used with its compact umlauts, the then usual ligatures for pairs like ch and ck, and the double hyphen – see all three peculiarities combined in the word “Über-Ich”.

Previously, until vol. XVII, no 4, the journal had a similar layout composed from Walter Tiemann’s Tiemann-Antiqua, another “artist’s typeface” that – like Koch-Antiqua – was produced by the Klingspor foundry in Offenbach, Germany.

The final issue with Koch-Antiqua on the cover was No. 4 from 1937. In 1938, when Austria was annexed into Nazi Germany, Freud had to flee the country, and the journal could no longer be published there. From 1939 to 1941, it was continued from Freud’s exile in London, merged with Imago into the Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse und Imago, then featuring De Roos’s Erasmus-Mediaeval for the cover typography.

There are various adaptations and interpretations of Koch-Antiqua available in digital form, but none that covers the full style range of the original, complete with extras such as the tall alternates, decorative capitals, and swash forms. Ralf Herrmann seeks to fix this. He’s currently running a campaign to crowdfund a faithful, full-featured revival, to be released under an open source license, eventually free for anyone to use. If you want to help get the campaign over the finish line, you can do so. But you need to hurry: it will end very soon, on June 3, 2025, 3:26 PM CEST.