Hebrew Type Design in the Context of the Book Art Movement and New

Philipp Messner Hebrew Type Design in the Context of the Book Art Movement and New Typography "New Book Art" ("Neue Buchkunst") was the motto under which efforts were made, in the spirit of the English Arts and Crafts Movement, toward the revival of book and type design in turn-of-the-twentieth century Germany. This revival movement perceived itself as a reaction to the country's accelerated industrialization, especially since the founding of the Reich in 1871. The replacement of traditional craft by increasingly industrial production lines effected a variety of everyday consumer products, including the manufacturing of books. According to contemporary commentators this led to deterioration in the material and aesthetic quality of books. Similarly to other industrially manufactured products around the turn of the century, an expectation emerged for books to have a contemporary, functional, and materially sound form. This demand encompassed all aspects of the book, including printing types. Consequently, visual artists were now engaged to design typefaces. Early examples were still heavily influenced by Art Nouveau, but after World War I there was a turn to historical forms with a bias toward handwritten scripts. This was influenced largely by the English calligrapher and type designer Edward Johnston, who taught at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. His calligraphic method, which he based on old handwriting forms, became famous in Germany, in part thanks to the work of his pupil and translator, Anna Simons. Type design issues thus received a notably traditional treatment, defined above all by intensive engagement with historical forms. This tendency largely defined the personal styles of Franzisca Baruch and Henri Friedlaender. Around 1925 New Typography broke with this trend and propagated a new, truly industrial aesthetics. 21 Type Design and Arts and Crafts Training in Germany Important representatives of the aesthetic trend that aimed for a revival of old forms were small presses, which in the 1890s modeled themselves after William Morris's Kelmscott Press in Hammersmith, London. In these establishments the separation between publishing, design, and manufacturing gave way to an all-inclusive operation, thereby seeking an ideal correlation between the contents and design of the book. The small presses aimed to be role models for the enhancement of the quality of books, magazines, and typefaces in terms of form, craftsmanship, and art. Indeed, in Germany the small presses succeeded in becoming "experimental institutions" for a series of larger businesses that became agents for the revival of book art.1 An exemplary case of successful combination of the bibliophile. reform movement and mass production was - alongside the publishing house Insel with its Library series (Bucherei) - the Klingspor type foundry in Offenbach. This internationally operative company which, among other things, took part in establishing WENIGE+ the Werkbund (German Association of Craftsmen), was known for its firm insistence on the aesthetic quality of its products. In the 1920s, the foundry engaged Rudolf Koch, SCHRIFTEN who at the time was one of the supreme type +~ine Auswahl unttt dm schonstm + designers in Germany. Koch's work skillfully gebm dt:m BudtJruck¢r,d¢r seineAuf_. fused the development of an expressive design tra~kr imma ~fried¢n stE:ll~n will, with sound craftsmanship, thus becoming an dn~mtsclti~dem? Oba-I nhcit im tag• UchmWtttbt:wer"b.+Di~ "rwmdung important role model for Henri Friedlaender. unseru b~anntm Kiinstler•S ¢rt The existence of a graphic industry with sichert Ji~ rlegmhdt.. explicit awareness of quality was at this point GEBR.ICLINGSPOR m time matched by the opening of courses OFFENBA<H·MAIN in typography and lettering at a number of arts and crafts schools in Germany, which Neuland and Koch-Antiqua typefaces in an integrated the spirit of the Werkbund into advertisement for the Klingspor type foundry in Offenbach, 1926 their teaching program. A case in point was the 1 On the particularities of the culture of printing in twentieth-century Germany, see Robin Kinross, Modern Typography (London, 1991), pp. 67-79. 22 A A- Av ,l\, A fl e f) e €€ C.0.b ~b!:?.b 4=4=:¥0 0 G b b 0 b ~b1JJKKLM~""" lt 11atbr -14 0 p p ta. p f) p "' 1\, '--. .::.. ~ $.. -.~6tbltt ""~~~e l U U "'VV 'V'V,WW . ·'\V , .. , '-'~·x'x ~XX'ZZ2 ~~311'l .....~~) "" \,,... 'W \V t P 11 Pt rn~"' ~'il 1'~-:t a'lA ,~ C\~11ANCO~ >..NTIPHON.xR.. Henri Friedlaender's exercises from Hermann Delitsch's calligraphy classes, Leipzig, 1925-26 Academy for Graphic Arts and Book Manufacturing, based in Leipzig, which was the center of German bookproduction.2 It was to this academy that the 21-year old Henri Friedlaender applied in 1925, at which point he had worked for a publishing house in Berlin for three years. According to his application letter, he wanted first and foremost to develop his artistic and technical skills in order to be able to work successfully in a small press or similar institution.3 Friedlaender, who passed his professional examination as typesetter in July 1926 and left the academy after less than one year, was mostly influenced by the typography class of Hermann Delits ch, 4 a pioneer in the teaching of typography and lettering. Delits ch also pursued studies in the history of letterforms, and created a systematic 2 On the history of the Leipzig Academy see Julia Blume and Fred Smeijers, Ein Jahrhundert Schrift und Schriftunterricht in Leipzig I One Century of Type and Typefaces in Leipzig (Leipzig, 2010). 3 Henri Friedlaender, handwritten curriculum vitae, 10 September 1925, Staatsarchiv Leipzig, 20199/103. 4 Kurt Lob, Exil-Gestalten. Deutsche Buchgestalter in den Niederlanden, 1932-1950 (Arnhem, 1995), p. 42. 23 and comprehensive collection of handwritten and printed Latin texts. His teaching method included, first and foremost, diligent copying of such examples. It was Delitsch's exemplary collection which, among other things, inspired Friedlaender to create a collection of Hebrew typography. 5 Typography and lettering was taught at the educational institution attached to the Museum of Decorative Arts in Berlin, too, which Franzisca Baruch joined in the summer term of 1918/19 after passing the entrance exam for the vocational class in book art and graphic art. In Berlin it was Peter Jessen, the long-standing director of the library of the Museum of Decorative Arts, who succeeded - as writer and public lecturer - in pushing through his conviction that, contrary to the often narrow view of book design as limited to ornamentation, script should be regarded as the central element in book design, surpassing any decoration. With the legacy of Johnston in mind, Jes sen propagated his view that the qualitative enhancement of printed media could not be achieved without the general cultivation of formal writings skills. 6 Qµestions of type design at the institute were determined not only by Jes sen but also by the famous Emil Rudolf Weiss. This autodidact, who during Baruch's studies in Berlin was honored, for example, by a special issue of the professional journal Archiv fur Buchgewerbe und Gebrauchsgrafik dedicated to his work,7 was initially inspired by Art Nouveau and later visited the classes of Anna Simons and was exposed, through Jes sen, to the typefaces of the incunabula period. 8 Consequently, Weiss's typeface designs were derived from traditional forms of script. The cultural historian Walther Georg Oschilewski uses the term "script monuments" (Schnftdenkmaler) to describe the types which Weiss revived in a creative transformation process.9 However, at the teaching institute of the Museum of Decorative Arts Weiss taught not as typographic designer but as painter and head of the vocational class for decorative painting and pattern design. Weiss's influence on issues of type design at the institute was indirect but nevertheless long-lasting. Franzisca Baruch, for example, attended during her first semester evening 5 See Henri Friedlaender to Siegfried Guggenheim, 23 June 1947, Leo Baeck Institute Archives, Siegfried Guggenheim Collection, AR 180/1/16. 6 See Peter Jessen, 11 Die Sch rift," Arch iv far Buchgewerbe 1/4 (1899): 149. 7 Archiv tar Buchgewerbe und Gebrauchsgraphik 59, 9/10 (1922). 8 Walther G. Oschilewski, 11 E. R. WeiB und die Schonheit der Formen," Imprimatur NF 2 (1960): 5-13, 10. 9 Ibid. 24 classes in lettering with Else Marcks Penzig, 10 who was a student of E.R. Weiss and jointly with him designed book covers and jackets for the Insel and Fischer publishing houses.11 The fact that the talented designer Marcks Penzig, who successfully taught at the vocational center during the war years, was replaced by a male teacher immediately after the war ended must have made the young female student acutely aware of the precarious situation of working women. After studying for three years in the book art and graphic-art program directed by Emil Orlik, in 1922 Baruch moved to the new department of commercial art (Gebrauchsgraphik), where Ernst Typographic layout copied by Franzisca Baruch from a medieval manuscript to her notebook Bohm became her teacher. Bohm made a name for himself as illustrator and designer of book covers and stamps, and developed his own graphic style characterized by "naive" forms and motifs taken from folk art. At the same time, however, his lettering works remained entirely within the lines that E.R. Weiss, a close friend of his, had established.12 Franzisca Baruch's preoccupation with Hebrew letterforms - she was to learn the spoken language only much later and never very successfully - began during her first years at the institute. In Berlin, as the sketchbooks in her archive suggest, she apparently took good advantage of the rich collections of the Art Library in Berlin and the Berlin State Library for independent learning.13 In parallel with her attempts to creatively revive elapsed traditions of Roman and blackletter typefaces, as taught at the institute and in bibliophile circles, Baruch approached Hebrew 10 Franzisca Baruch, Zensurbogen Sommersemester 1918/19, Universitat der Kunste Berlin, Universitatsarchiv, 7 /350.

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