Early German Typography (Part 2)

Carl Shank • September 22, 2025

Herbert Hoffmann, Albert Bruckner, Max Hertwig, and Rudolf Koch collaborated on a typographic “atlas” or specimen book titled Hoffmanns Schriftatlas: Das Schriftschaffen der Gegenwart in Alphabeten und Anwendungen (1930) (Hoffmann’s Type Atlas: Contemporary Type Creation in Alphabets and Applications) Also distributed in France under the title Alphabets by Herbert Hoffman and other collaborators by Arts et Métiers Graphiques magazine, it is a specimen of alphabets, initials, monograms, logos and other typographic forms from early German typography. The atlas captures typographic modernism in Germany around that time, including influences of the Bauhaus and the modernist movement. It is considered a rich visual record of type and lettering design in that period, showing both experimental and traditional forms. 


In Part One of this series, we investigated the typography of early Germany through the lens of Rudolf Koch, Louis Oppenheim, E.R. Weiss, Lucian Bernhard, Friedrich Wilhelm Kleukens, and Bernard Naudin. In this Part Two we revisit the typography of Ernst Deutsch, Friedrich Heinrichsen, Benjamin Krebs Nachfolger, Maria Ballé, Margarete Leins, Anna Simons and take a brief visit to the Ecole des Arts et Metiers in Stuttgart.

Ernst Deutsch (1887–1938). Born in Vienna, Austria, Ernst Deutsch first worked as a costume designer and studied under Gustav Klimt. In Paris, he worked he worked on costumes for Coco Chanel, before moving to the United States in 1929, where he changed his name to Ernst Dryden and was employed from 1933 onwards as a costume designer for Universal, Columbia and Selznick in Hollywood. He died in Los Angeles in 1938


In typography, Deutsch designed Tango Kursiv (1913), Tango Antiqua and Tango Antiqua Halbfelt (1916). He was known for designing display lettering and poster typography, especially in the pre-World War One period. Digital revivals have been offered by Nick Curtis in his Rhumba Script NF, a free revival of Tango Kursiv, and Oliver Weiss in his WF Paletti in 2016–2017. Deutsch fonts have strong display orientation, with elegant, somewhat decorative, but still relatively clean visual style. We also see the influence of early twentieth-century graphic design movements in Europe in the Art Nouveau/Jugenstil, poster arts, and his exposure to Paris-based design sensibilities

This is a photograph of the typecase for Tango-Antiqua. It was captured by  Albert-Jan Pool in Wetzig's Handbuch Der Schriftarten from 1926 in visiting Katharina Jesdinsky's print workshop in Kiel in 2017.

Friedrich Heinrichsen (1901–1980). Heinrichsen worked as a typographer and graphic artist. Part of his training came under Rudolf Koch, becoming his assistant in Offenbach in 1924. After World War Two he taught typography, was involved in rebuilding efforts and worked on industrial, advertising and church commissions.


His best known typeface is Gotenburg. Gotenburg is a “broken grotesque” style font, referencing old blackletter or fractured styles and sans/grotesque styles for letter forms. Gotenburg comes in Gotenburg Bold and decorative variants in Gotenburg A and B. He also designed the Heinrichsen-Kanzlei face. As part of the Offenbach School, he emphasized craftsmanship, calligraphic roots and the integration of letter-forms with ornamentation and strong design sensibilities.


Benjamin Krebs Nachfolger (or just Krebs Nachf) founded one of the significant German foundries in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It produced many typeface designs, especially what is referred to as blackletter (“Fraktur”) and early sans-serif (Grotesks) as well as display and decorative type. Blackletter faces included Normale Fraktur, Neue Fraktur, Kunstler Gottisch, Psalter Gottisch and Kaiser Gottisch. A history of Krebs Nachf was written by Gustav Mori in 1916. The firm was taken over by Ludwig & Mayer, and then Klingspor and finally by Stempel in 1933.


Maria Ballé was one of the first female type designers. While the exact date of her work is not clearly known, references suggest it wa during the 1920s. She created the face called Ballé Initials for the Bauer Type Foundry. She along with Margarete Leins (Stuttgart) and Anna Simons (Munich) were some of the few women typographers of the period. Leins contributed to calligraphy and decorative lettering, participating in the resurgence of handcraft in typography influenced by Jugendstil and the Arts & Crafts movement. Simons translations of Johnston’s work and her teaching helped establish a modern German calligraphic tradition. She influenced Rudolph Koch and others in early twentieth century calligraphic renaissance.



Ecole des Arts et Metiers de Stuttgart (State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart). A public fine art university in Stuttgart, Germany, founded in 1761. By 1950 you could study painting, glass painting, sculpture, free and applied graphics, interior and furniture design (″Innenarchitektur und Möbelbau"), textiles, ceramics, metal and art teaching, and professors included Trude Barth, Otto Baum, Willi Baumeister, Walter Brudi, Rudolf Daudert, Hans Fegers, Eugen Funk, Gerhard Gollwitzer, Peter Otto Heim, Manfred Henninger, Karl Hils, Eberhard Krauß, Hans Meid, Hugo Peters, Karl Rössing, Harmi Ruland, Hermann Sohn, Karl Hans Walter, Hans Warnecke, Kurt Wehlte, Hans Wentzel, Karl Wiehl and Rudolf Yelin. A sample of an early twentieth century art/typography piece highlighting the alphabet is included in Alphabets. (Wikipedia)


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Compositors & Type: Origin and Use of “Uppercase” and “Lowercase”

By Carl Shank • June 13, 2026
Compositors & Type: Origin and Use of “Uppercase” and “Lowercase” Carl Shank, CARE Typography Most everyone knows what “uppercase” and “lowercase” letters are. They refer, of course, to our “capital” letters and our “regular” small print. But not many know why or how they came to be known by such terminology. The answer is found in the history and development of typography and printing. “Case” here doesn’t refer to “circumstance” or “condition.” It refers to the wooden trays used to store metal letters, the top case for capital letters (“uppercase”) and the lower case for small letters. Each tray was divided into compartments to hold the type. The lower case also held the punctuation marks and other pieces of type, like “spacers.” The type case was a shallow wooden tray divided into compartments of various sizes. There were about thirty styles of type cases, and some of these were made in different sizes.[1] The most common, or standard, size was 32¼ by 16 inches, outside dimensions, and ⅛ inches deep, inside. One of three traditional plans or schemes for such type cases involved (1) all characters in one case; (2) capitals, small capitals and a few other characters in one case; or (3) the small letters, figures, points, spaces and quads in another case. The two latter cases formed a pair and would nearly always be used together.(See Images) Hand compositors (or “swifts”) would take individual letters, spaces and punctuation marks or other characters from the type case and place them in what was called a composing “stick” in such a manner that when the type characters are properly assembled, they form words, sentences and paragraphs. The work of the press room compositor was divided into two fundamental operations — the “setting” of type and the “unsetting” of type. The former was called composition and the latter, distribution. A visual example of such typesetting can be seen in some of the episodes of The Waltons, an American historical dramatelevision series about a family in rural western Virginia in the Appalachian/Blue Ridge mountains chain, during the economic hardships and mass unemployment of the Great Depression in the 1930s and the subsequent United State home front during World War II in the 1940s. The series aired from 1972 to 1981. John-Boy, a leading character of the series, opened a print shop in a shed by the family home with an old-fashioned mechanical printer that required setting cold metal type from a type case. His brother was the compositor while John-Boy ran the printing machine.

Vanity Type

By Carl Shank • June 6, 2026
Reading through an old volume of Frederick Nelson Phillips, Inc, Type Faces:With Which We 'Prove It With Proofs' in Typography for Advertisements (New York, 1924), I came across some type that falls outside of the standard typography models, called "vanity type." The term “vanity typography” is not a formal category in typographic history like Old Style, Transitional, Modern, or Sans Serif. Designers typically use the phrase informally to describe typography that draws attention primarily to itself rather than serving the text or reader. Vanity typography occurs when type is used as a display of the designer's skill, fashion, or personal taste rather than to improve communication. Readability is sometimes sacrificed for self-expression and artistic flair. Such type styles use excessive ornamentation, decorative letterforms, overuse of effects like shadows, outlines, gradients and distortions, unusual spacing, and generally typography used to impress rather than inform. Notice in the sample by Phillips, the different "A's," "F's,", "G's," "H's," "L's," "M's," "S's," T's" and "W's." This is not calligraphy lettering, but rather type that could have been used for verses or opening letters to paragraphs or stories.
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