Typography Tuesday
On this final #Typography Tuesday of 2021, as we transition from December of one year to January of another, we present those two months as typographically represented in The Bauer Almanac for 1939, published in New York by the German Bauer Type Foundry (Bauersche Giesserei). It was printed in Elizabeth Roman and Italic types designed by the noted German designer Elizabeth Friedländer and released by Bauer in 1938. The woodcuts are by Karl Vollmer who had been a student of the German grand-master designer Rudolf Koch. Friedländer herself had been a student of the German artist and type designer Emil Rudolf Weiss, who designed Bauer’s noted Weiss family of typefaces starting in 1927.
Bauer’s owner Georg Hartmann, who had opened the New York office in 1927, commissioned Friedländer to design her typeface, which was originally named Friedländer-Antiqua, but had to be renamed Elizabeth, since Friedländer, a recognizably Jewish name, was inadvisable after Hitler came to power in 1933. The Bauer firm, the stock of which is still directed by Georg Hartmann’s great-granddaughter Vivian Harmann, was originally established by type designer and punchcutter Johann Christian Bauer in 1837 at Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Today the range of Bauer typefaces is extensive and notable. The Frankfurt headquarters itself is long closed, but Bauer still has a presence in the Barcelona company Fundición Tipográfica Neufville which holds the rights to Bauer typefaces that Vivian Hartmann manages as Neufville Digital.
View other posts on typefaces by Elizabeth Friedländer.
View other posts on the Bauer Type Foundry.
View more Typography Tuesday posts.