Monday, January 31, 2011

One more thing

Listen to this recording. Brilliant.

Brecht

After I went to the Volksbühne, I got an overwhelming desire to change direction (again). I still love typography and I'm not over the street sign idea at all, but it's a complicated topic that I'm having trouble figuring out how to deal with. I also can't decide if this is something that I actually want to do research on. So, instead of forcing myself into discovering a brilliant research topic, I decided to just read some literature.

After seeing SCHMEISS DEIN EGO WEG! I started feel guilty about how much I pretend to love Brecht without having read very many of his works. So, I read Die Dreigroschenoper today. When I finished after only getting up to use the rest facilities once, I felt extremely confused and also couldn't really feel my feet. I admit that I went straight home to look up a synopsis to try to decipher what I had missed. Turns out, plot-wise, I didn't miss anything. So, three cheers for my German reading and zero cheers for my play/opera-understanding. But, here are my thoughts:

1. I'm extremely disappointed that there are no productions of this show happening in Berlin in the next two weeks. If I had to pick out one major point that I got out of our Woyzeck class last year, it is the importance of production. The Dreigroschenoper, even more than a standard play, is so different in on stage than in writing. As a student of literature it is sometimes tempting to read plays like novels. We've being doing since middle school with our requisite one Shakespeare play per year of high school. Reading the text is also important; close-reading and a really excellent understanding of the play is the goal, but not really the purpose. We read it to analyze it, but Brecht wrote it for production. All of this seems extremely obvious, but it goes back to the original issue of typography (ho ho!) and perception--my experience of reading the Threepenny Opera in 12 pt. Garamond in a cafe in Berlin removes the removal of the vierte Wand and, perhaps more importantly, the music. The argument that reading a drama is not the same as watching a drama is pretty basic, but it is nevertheless necessary to point out.

2. Women!?! I don't quite know how to start discussing this aspect of this text. I actually would much rather be dealing with this in a class than on a blog, but this is not an option right now. Again, an analysis of the female roles would be a lot more interesting with an Inszenierung to work with. In any case, I find the role of prostitution extremely interesting. The men in the play are beggars; the women are prostitutes, of one sort or another. Mac, at the beginning, seems to effortlessly dodge the law, get what he wants (in an absurdly easy fashion), etc, but he is first brought down by his new wife (ish)'s family, then "verraten von den Huren" and given away by women at various moments. Women constantly are his weakness, even though they seem to innocently grovel before him. I don't really know how to read these relationships. Any commentary would be helpful. Also, I thought it was interesting how often the characters used the expression "gnädige Frau." The inappropriateness of this term in the context of prostitutes and beggars might be part of Brecht's alienation.

3. I love how Brecht makes it confusing who the protagonist/antagonist is. This (I think) is one of his most important theatrical devices, and it works so well to make the reader/viewer question what is happening in a critical way. I want to go back and read some secondary sources on Brecht again before I go into this stuff too much, because I don't want to misread.

I will come back to this opera a bit more after I read some criticism, but I also want to read a couple more plays (suggestions, please!) and see a few more. As to the history research, fear not, this does lead somewhere, and somewhere I really like:

Part of what made me want to read Brecht was because of something I read early this morning in a book called "Brecht in der USA," which I sort of randomly decided to look at. The book had translations into German of various reviews and interviews from the period that Brecht lived in the U.S. Threepenny was one of only three or four Brecht plays that was performed in the U.S. at the time. I am somewhat considering looking into Brecht/other German "exiles" in the U.S. during the Second World War and the Cold War, so I thought going back to the texts was important. Anyway, the point I wanted to make had to do with a tidbit in this book about the OSS (the Office of Strategic Services), which was a precursor to the CIA. Get this: even though Brecht was under serious watch from both HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) and the FBI, the OSS thought seriously about using Brecht as part of their secret propaganda programs! According to the document I read today, they decided not to ask him because they didn't think he had enough influence among the "common man" because his audience was mostly the intelligentsia. I find this so incredibly ironic and fascinating on so many levels. I would love to know if the OSS ever contacted him, and if so, how that went over. The thought of Bertolt Brecht, of all people, writing propaganda for the U.S. seems truly incredible to me.

As I do more reading, I'm going to investigate more on Brecht's interactions with Americans and his reception in the U.S. I find this intriguing. I'll also be able to do more of this back the the U.S. where I'll have more access to American sources. Who knows, I might pursue this further, though I'm changing my mind daily at this point.

Apologies that this all took such a sudden turn. Hopefully I come out of this trip actually having achieved something somewhat specific-ish.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

A relaxing weekend, Volksbühne and all

I've taken a couple days off of working (if that's what I'm going to call what I do) to relax a bit and hang out with friends. Tonight I went to a show called SCHMEISS DEIN EGO WEG at the Volksbühne. It was exactly as outrageous and way over my head as I expected. One more thing I wished Herr Shahan were there for to explain. There were only about three characters, all arguing about Seele and Körper and the vierte Wand, which there physically was on the stage separating the audience from the set, back and forth from which the actors would move throughout. Whenever they went back behind, a strange camera projection would show on the wall above. I got the Brecht reference and bits and pieces of the humor, but I basically missed the whole point, I think. It was still pretty awesome. I might go back to see Tod eines Praktikanten.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Potsdam, Zierfische

Yesterday I rode a bicycle to Potsdam with some friends, then came back to go to the Zierfische opening of the Buchstabenmuseum. Check out their website for the story of the sign. I also tested out the panorama feature on my little camera, which turned out pretty well. Hopefully you can click on them to see full size.



Tonight is the Lange Nacht der Museen. It's an evening where you buy a single ticket and can get bussed around to as many museums as you want until two a.m. I generally like doing one museum per day, taking my time, etc, but I might have to do this just for the sake of it. It also might be a good way to see some museums I wasn't planning on going to. We shall see.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

By George, I may or may not have it.

In the search for a thesis topic, I might have finally come up with something while trying to fall asleep last night. In my sleepy haze it might have seemed way more brilliant than it actually is, but I like it at the moment, so I'm going to run with it.

Everything I've done and seen so far has made me ask a lot of questions. This is good. Now, many things I've come across are pushing me to ask more questions about signage (blogger is telling me signage is not a word; it is definitely a word) in Berlin. After watching a few Spiekermann interviews and reading some of his stuff, I've learned that he is the designer of the typeface and look of Deutsche Bahn (except the red DB logo, which I believe was designed by Weidemann). I also observed that the typeface of street signs in Berlin is an interesting mix of modern and old-fashioned elements; it is a sans serif type, yet uses versions of the old Esszet and z. Here are some examples:

Another observation I have is that the street names in Berlin have changed a LOT. Between the Kaiser, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the occupation, the Cold War, the Berlin Wall, DDR, BRD, reunification, and the continuing struggle for a solid national and city identity, place names in Berlin have been in an almost constant state of flux throughout history. So, the signs must have changed!

So, who has designed all of these different signs? Where have those signs gone? Do people care when the names change? Do they care when the signs change? If they don't care, do they even notice? Who decided all the names? Who decided on the typeface? How does the print through which geographic orientation is communicated affect the experience of orientation and identification with a given place?

Most importantly: a street or Platz name means nothing if it's not on a sign. Period. The design of the sign matters. Erik Spiekermann designed the current Bahn signs in the subway, but what else has happened in to the graphic design of signs in the history of Berlin's place-name-process?? I am making this question my mission for my last two weeks (along with continued museum visits...).

I also may or may not decide to connect this with Paris, which I know nothing about, but also has a super interesting history that I'm sure connects to street names and signs. This is something for another day, though.

So, today I went to the Märkisches Museum, the museum for Berlin history. Museums are generally only good for extremely introductory info, but I wanted to see what they had in the way of pictures of street corners, reproductions of old maps, and information on the history of different neighborhoods. It was a good start. There were tidbits about the development of the Kurfürstendamm, Wilhemstrasse, etc. I also found out the details about Stalin Allee: part of Frankfurter Allee was renamed Stalin Allee in 1949, then in 1961 renamed again, part Frankfurter Allee and part Karl-Marx-Allee. It's still that way now.

After the museum, I decided to go back to the Buchstabenmuseum to take some pictures to post. I have a lot, but here are the ones of the HAUP from the old Ostbahnhof and the RUNDFUNK from the DDR radio, along with a couple others that I forgot to identify but demonstrate the awesomeness of the museum:
(HAUP) (RUNDFUNK)


This stuff also all relates to my initial questions--somebody clearly cares about saving letters, but how about street signs with historical names and typefaces?

Then I scurried back to my apartment to start looking around the internet for stuff on the graphic design of street signs. I'm really bad at using the search engines on German libraries, but I did manage to find a book that is essentially a Lexikon of street names in Berlin, with a volume for each neighborhood. It was published in the mid-nineties, presumably to ease any place-name-freakout/identity crisis Berlin probably went through during that period. Who knows if it worked, but it briefly explains the names of streets since the beginning of Berlin. Some haven't changed since the 17th century, and others seem to have changed since the book was published in 1995. I want to go beyond what the names have been to what the signs looked like, but this is a great resource.

I also found an interesting essay about the politics of cartography called "Kartographie und Politik: Anmerkungen zum Stadtplan >>Berlin - Hauptstadt der DDR<<" Definitely interesting stuff. Plus, the footnotes pointed me to the Landesarchiv Berlin, where I should be able to look at a whole archive of maps. Maps are good, but still don't get me to where the signs went. I'm a little unsure of where to go on this one, but I found a news article about a German typographer who has taken an interest in/inspiration from old street signs in Berlin. Verena Gerlach lives in Berlin, and I'm going to try to get an interview with her. She seems to know her stuff when it comes to signage in Berlin. I'm still contemplating trying to interview Spiekermann. He's pretty high profile, but hey, it can't hurt to ask.

Tomorrow I am going on a bicycle adventure to Potsdam with some friends of Dave Oxnard's, so I probably won't make any progress on the research. The Buchstabenmuseum has an opening for a new exhibit in the evening, though, so I should have some pictures from both that and the Fahrradtour. Happy Weekend!

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Schrift in Berlin, pt. 2: Im Kiez

From what I gather, "Kiez" is a Berlin slang term for neighborhood. In my attempt to sound cool, I named this section "In the neighborhood." This may or may not be a misuse, but I'm over it. These specimens come from my walk between the Humboldt library and my apartment on Tucholskystrasse. The dog at the end was just sitting in the window of a super fancy boutique!! They really took "how much is that doggy in the window" to heart! I think he deserves better than Helvetica, though!



History of typography vs. typography as history

As I've been reading about the history of typography, I see that the history of type fits into the history of Germany (and everywhere else) as evidence cultural and political trends. Like any other aspect of aesthetic culture, especially those that are so closely tied with perception bzw. consumerism bzw. politics, etc, typography has changed with various movements like Modernism, Expressionism, and Punk (yes, Punk is included in encyclopedias of typeface, CS). So, why is typeface just as or more important to history than art, music, photography, etc (in my opinion)? It might not be, but for the sake of argument, here's mine:

Type, as a subset of graphic design, is both art and communication. A lot of things are art and communication, but, in our society (I'm going to go ahead and be ethnocentric for a moment), almost everyone can read. Definitely everyone who has power can read. So, our perceptions of information like personal messages, advertisements, laws, etc. are all conveyed through type.

If you read the link I posted yesterday about the Eszet, or even some of it, you know that Germans take spelling very seriously. I think typography is particularly significant here because of the cultural meaning type and spelling have taken on throughout history. In the United States type has similar effects as far as how we perceive information, but I would argue that the historical/aesthetic significance is less. The fact that Germans still argue about the Rechtschreibreform (which stems from a debate over the extent to which Fraktur should still be a part of the German Roman alphabet!) is testament to the importance of type here in Germany. This is not to say it's not important other places; I always think back to the designer on the film Helvetica who said that she always equated the font Helvetica with the Vietnam War.

This is getting repetitive with my previous posts, but I'm working on how to fit all this into my academic life, so the repetition is helpful, please bear with me.

Even though I somewhat take issue with some of Weidemann's ideas, his book has a long section on "Schrift und Geschichte" that I need to revisit. Also, I think I'm going to try to set up some interviews. I need to pose some questions before people who know what they are talking about.

I checked out the Mauerpark today. Very cool, but I still don't really know what to say about graffiti. It's a subculture I find mysterious and daunted by. On the agenda for tomorrow: more Weidemann, Berlinische Galerie (maybe) and a trip back to the Buchstabenmuseum.

Also, I saw this on Schönhauser Allee and I found it interesting:


P.S. Double post day! Exciting!

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

The epic linkage of the blogosphere!

READ THIS

Is a picture really worth a thousand words?

I think I might have opened a can of worms I totally can't handle by bringing up graffiti, but, alas, it's still something to think about. Re: Cyrus questions about Die Dame I think I will work on tomorrow, hopefully in conjunction with a post about the results of the contest on Miss Mia.

I'm not going to attempt to say anything about what graffiti is or is not in general terms anymore, because there is so much that ranges every bit of any spectrum that can ever exist. But, I think it is safe to say that graffiti IS typography, just as much as any other written word is. At the same time, it seems to be self-conscious (or rather, the artist is self-conscious) about the medium, and therefore the Schrift itself tends to fall into categories just as much as mass advertisements, books, etc. I'm going to stop writing and starting quoting, because what other people say is probably more useful at this point. First, Dittmar on typography/graffiti:

"Nicht nur die Bedeutung der Worte selbst wird also mitgeteilt, sondern durch die Angestaltung der Schriftzeichen wird auch auf weitere Bedeutungen reflektiert. Die Schrift spiegelt dabei den Sinn, der abhängig vom jeweiligen zeitlichen, dringlichen oder personalen Kontext ist."

To this I respond by saying that the same is true for all typeface. Graffiti might resemble pictures more closely than a book's typeface, but any type is chosen for a certain purpose. Part of what makes graffiti so interesting is the interplay between images and words. I suppose the same is true for any visual media.

In his book Wo der Buchstabe das Wort Führt, typographer Kurt Weidemann addresses graffiti in a different way, in the context of a discussion on "Das nachalphabetische Zeitalter," or, the post-alphabet age. On graffiti:

"Graffiti-Sprayer erfinden Zeichnen. Aber die besagen keine Wort mehr. Das Nachalphabet, das auf Zügen und Bahnhöfen, Wänden und Mauern, Über- und Unterführungen manchen Ärger und manche Schönheit offenbart, demonstriert den Ausdrucksbedarf der Wortlosen."

I'm not sure if I buy that graffiti-ers are "wortlos," but I like a point he makes about pictures vs. words later in the chapter in a caption to a picture of one of those emergency escape directionals in the seat-back pocket of an airplane:

"Mit der Weltweite des Verkehrs und des Handels in großem Umfang haben Schrift und Sprache ihre nationalen Grenzen und Kommunikationsschwierigkeiten aufgezeigt. Die Sprache der Bilder verschafft unmittelbares Verständnis und is auch für eine Gefahrensituation- harmloser als Worte es sein können. Das Bild hat nicht die Autorität des Wortes. [my italics]"

I can't decide how I feel about this! I definitely agree that a word can express something concrete, but how concrete is it? More so than pictures? In the context of the card in the seat-back pocket, pictures definitely serve to soften a potentially alarming idea, but does that idea apply to all things?

I've also noticed that in Germany road signs and things use pictures a lot more than in the US, z.B. road work signs here are all graphic instead of our huge orange ones that just say ROAD WORK. Maybe this is just another example of the Weltweite des Verkehrs Weidemann is talking about.

I think I need to think more about all this graffiti stuff (and read Herr Dr. Prof. Shahan's article) before trying to say any more. I seem to be winding myself into a confused knot.

Speaking of typography (when do I speak of anything else?), check out this clip of an interview with Erik Spiekermann. I keep hoping to run into him somewhere in Berlin, but this is unlikely.

I also went to the Deutsche Kinemathek museum today. It was pretty fun, especially the several-room shrine to Marlene Dietrich. The Germans wouldn't have it any other way.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Graffiti als Typographie?

First off, an answer to Herr Dr. Prof. Shahan's question about objectivity: no. As Spiekermann would tell you, even typeface can't be objective. Even those designers that attempt to achieve objectivity lose that goal in the process of trying to achieve it. But, a lot of people say that the best typeface is one you don't notice. Maybe that is the achievement of objectivity in visual representation? I still take issue with that because then you have to define "noticing." What do we notice without knowing we're noticing it? We read things graphically, so we must be noticing the typeface on some level.

Today I went down to look at the East Side Gallery. I liked it, but I sort of think that the art is predictably peace-loving and almost cheery in its post-unification-ness. It made me wish there were large sections of the wall still preserved with the original graffiti.

Which got me to thinking. I took a few pictures of graffiti in my little photo study of Alexanderplatz, because it seemed natural to include it. But, there isn't much talk of graffiti in the big books on Typographic eras, styles, and methods that I've been skimming through. This is mostly because graffiti artists aren't designers--at least in the traditional sense--who create images to sell products. But, graffiti is presumably trying to achieve something, whatever it may be, and it uses words--Schrift--to depict that whatever message. Typography doesn't seem like the right word because it implies the use of print, but in any case, graffiti is a definite form of Schrift with definite implications. I'm not sure what, yet, but I might start by taking more pictures, and reading this book:

Im Vorbeigehen: Graffiti, Tattoo, Tragetaschen: En-Passant-Medien von Jakob Dittmar.

I went back to Die Dame today as well, and found that the switch away from Fraktur happened in 1921, whereas for BIZ it never happened. Both were from the Ullstein publishing company. Clearly, design choices had to do with the audience (Berliner illustrierte Zeitung=everybody's magazine aka traditional German, Die Dame=high culture for the New Woman aka Modern, although still not in sans serif).

Tomorrow I think I'll go to the Museum for Film und Fernsehen, for fun, and read the Dittmar. Hopefully the sun comes out at some point!

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Answers, Kollwitz, Spiekermann

When I went to the library today, Die neue Typographie was absent from the shelf. I hope it reappears. In any case, I will attempt to answer some questions my professor posed to my post from a couple of days ago, though without any Tschichold quotations to back me up.

1. Tschichold wrote an entire section about photography, but I'm at a loss as to specifics of his argument. But, I think a good response to your question is the general view that photography is objective (which it isn't) compared to say, expressionist painting. Jan has a problem with accompanying a Modern medium like photography with Schnörkel, etc. And, I think that as a man of the Neue Sachlichkeit, he not only has faith in technological wonders, but views them as superior and more beautiful than human creation. As he wrote, order=beauty.

2. To answer the question of "Beamtenschrift," going back to the woodcut commissioned by Maximilian I is useful. You're right! Fraktur in its original form had everything to do with pictures. It was created to accompany images that the public/visitors/admirers/whoever could appreciate, while historians were probably the only ones the Kaiser expected to read the actual text. Tschichold seems to reject Fraktur precisely because of its inaccessibility, both aesthetically and historically. He believed that basic functionality was the first priority of any typeface. In that sense, Fraktur could be connected with elitism, old structures of social order, despotism, etc. Ironically, several designers interviewed in the documentary Helvetica equated the ultimate modernist sans serif, Helvetica, with war, consumerism, uniformity, oppression, etc. Functionality, by the late 20th century, came full circle to become a typographic oppressor instead of liberator. At least that's what some post-modernists said. Don't quote me on this.

3. Tschichold thought EVERYTHING should be in Grotesk. Everything.

And, finally, I think the answer to the Grotesk vs. Law question, the only answer, from the Tschichold perspective, is that words themselves are not objective, but rather their graphic representation should be (hence the sans serifs). So, I think that posing Grotesk and Law against each other is invalid because one is a typeface and the other is something the typeface represents. Feel free to shoot me down on this one.

On to my ever-exciting activities of the day:

I went to the library to see if the Berliner illustrierte Zeitung ever switched out of Fraktur during the Weimar Republic. It didn't. While I was looking, I came across an interesting tidbit that goes back to my original topic: representations of the New Woman. In an October issue of the BIZ, 1927, the cover featured an image of a woman and a man, dressed and styled almost identically with fitted sport coats, ties, slick hair, and cigarettes, walking together with figures in the background looking on and evidently making snide remarks about the woman's androgynous appearance. Inside the front cover, the Zeitung posed a question with a competition for who could come up with the wittiest answer. It was similar to the New Yorker caption contest, but mean. Here is what it said:

"Das Bild auf der Titelseite zeigt eine Zeitgestalt "Fräulein Mia," einen neuen Mädchentyp, der sich in Arbeit, Lebensführung, und Erscheinung den Mann zum Vorbild genommen hat...Was sagen Sie bloß zu Fräulein Mia? 3.000 M für die witzigsten Lösungen."

Hilarious. (Not.) Coming into this topic, I was sort of expecting to have to interpret a lot of complex imagery with many meanings reflecting different views of women, but this is pretty blatant and straightforward. It will be interesting to compare this view with images from Die Dame in 1927 and 28.

I went to the Käthe Kollwitz museum in the afternoon. I have to say, of all the art I've seen so far, hers is easily the most beautiful, in my opinion. Even her political posters feature handwritten script, which is refreshing after thinking really hard about Modernist typeface lately.

I also started reading a book by a designer named Erik Spiekermann called Ursache & Wirkung: ein typographische Roman. To be honest, I don't really understand it. But, his basic thing is that modernists are bad because they make everything uniform, which is not the way things are. He is also just awesome, as demonstrated in this news clip.

Even though I find Spiekermann fascinating, his super precise and technical discussion of typeface in his book sort of made me realize that I am completely unequipped to actually study typography, mostly because of my lack of background in graphic design. So, I think I might change gears a bit and try to ground my investigations in history a bit more. We'll see how that goes.

Anyway, I guess the only Richtung to head at this point is forward, which I will do by looking more at Die Dame, maybe checking out the DDR museum (the Buchstabenmuseum has gotten me super interested in relics/material implications of the fall of the DDR), and attempting to get access to the poster archive of the Deutsches Historisches Museum. That would be truly epic, as kids these days would say. In any case, stay tuned.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Schrift in Berlin, pt. 1: Alexanderplatz

I went to the Bauhaus Archive museum today. It was very cool. I saw some more drawings, models and things by all the famous Bauhaus greats: Mies van der Rohe, Gropius, etc. I liked (of course) one quotation of Herbert Bayer the exhibit had up on the wall: "wir schreiben alles klein, denn wir sparen damit zeit." Bayer wanted to reject was he perceived as German over-use of capitals. Turns out a typeface has been developed based on his drawings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ABayer.png

When I emerged from the U Bahn at Alex afterward, I decided to start a bit of a photo project to go along with my wanderings. There isn't much point, except to take pictures of Schrift in Berlin because I like it. Unfortunately, the photography is not good thanks to my low-level camera and perpetually bad light in Berlin. Alas, life goes on. So, for today, here is Schrift in Berlin, pt. 1: Alexanderplatz.


Tomorrow I will go back to the library (for real this time), then probably check out the Käthe Kollwitz museum. I might even take a break from talking about type/lettering. Maybe.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Neue Nationalgalerie, Tschichold, and Plans

Today I went to the Neue Nationalgalerie to see its exhibit, Moderne Zeiten. The exhibit had a range of works from early expressionist up through the Neue Sachlichkeit, Socialist Realism, etc. It wasn't a huge collection, but I got to see some SUPER famous works of the period. Most exciting/awesome were:


Otto Dix's "Mondweib" and "Die Skatspieler," 1919 and 1920

Works by Bauhaus artists/designers Feininger, Klee, and Moholy-Nagy

And, some cool stuff by Oskar Nerlinger, including "Berlin City Train"

There was also a painting by Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart that was essentially several straight squares with an actual straight-edge/right angle tool (whatever you call those things) nailed onto the piece.

Anyway, I went back to the library this afternoon to investigate typography some more, looking especially for the Modernists' take on the old Fraktur style/its use in popular media. Zing! Jan Tschichold had something to say. Note that Fraktur looks like this:
Grotesk is the German word for sans serif, z.B. Verdana or Helvetica (though both were developed later). Tschichold ususally refers to serif fonts as Antiqua because they come from ancient Greek and Roman alphabets. Anyway, this quote on die illustrierte Zeitungen of the 20s is from Tschichold, Die neue Typographie, 1927:

"Für die Notwendigkeit der Grotesk als Auszeichnungsschrift kann man noch den weiteren Grund anführen, daß sie die einzige Schrift ist, die der Photographie wirklich entspricht, und zwar durch die beiden gemeinsame innere Objektivität. Die Schnörkel und Ranken der Fraktur, dieser Beamtenschrift des 16. Jahrhunderts, gehören nich mehr in unsere Zeit und werden nie zu einer solchen ausgeprochen gegenwärtigen Druckform wie der illustrierten Zeitschrift passen."

Ho Ho! I think it's time to go back to the Zeitschriften (Die Dame, but also non-gender-specific illustrated newspapers of the time) to check out who is and is not in line with Jan. Also: Fraktur brings to mind propaganda posters from the 3rd Reich. It might be interesting to investigate typeface as associated with political propaganda. Were parties that called for traditional "German" values more likely to employ Fraktur? Probably.

P.S. I tried to put the Tschichold quote in Verdana so as not to offend him with my serifs, but the internet-device isn't cooperating. Also, Schnörkel is my new Lieblingswort auf Deutsch.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Notes on Typography und das Buchstabenmuseum

This morning when I set back into the issues of Die Dame of 1920-21, I had trouble going through them quickly. Though the top reasons included the interesting pictures, the funny ads, etc. one of the most striking differences between this Zeitschrift and its modern (and I mean modern as in present-day) counterparts is its typeface. Die Dame, as of 1920, still used old German typography, i.e. Fraktur, Gothic-style blackletter.

This typeface stands out because my main fascination with Weimar visual culture is the phenomenon of Modernism. Before I came to Germany I went through a series of discoveries on typeface, including the film Helvetica about the modernist sans-serif developed in the 1950s and Jan Tschichold's 1928 declaration of modernist typographic standards, Die neue Typographie. Finding it in the original German is #1 on my to-do list for tomorrow. So, I came into this adventure with the partial purpose of observing typefaces and how they correspond to the content, message, and general aesthetic purpose of the text in question. In the case of Die Dame in the early Weimar period, I would tentatively state that the Fraktur typeface (which I will discuss more in a moment) corresponds with still relatively old-fashioned styles and content geared toward women. By this I mean that androgynous fashions, bobbed haircuts, and cigarette ads were not yet prevalent in the magazine. Whether or not typeface changes correspond with fashion changes I still don't know. But, it is safe to say that as of 1920-21 the modernist movement in graphic design was not yet in full swing and had not reached one of the major women's fashion magazines.

Anyway, after lunch I decided to stretch my legs, ditch the library, and go check out the Buchstabenmuseum. Best idea ever. This place is awesome. A postcard is in the mail on the way to you lucky ones in the Colbs German department, and I'll go back to take pictures to post very soon. The Buchstabenmuseum is a tiny exhibit in a space in a weird mall across from Alexanderplatz. The American intern working there called the building "DDR-tastic." I think it's being torn down pretty soon. The museum itself is basically a bunch of torn-down letters from various institutions and businesses that sit jumbled around in the little space. Huge letters with neon lightbulbs are just lying around, leaning against walls and stacked on each other. It sort of looks like a letter junkyard.

The best ones are the DDR relics. Most notably are the letters RUNDFUNK from the old DDR radio station and the H-A-U-P from the old DDR Hauptbahnhof. When the wall fell, they changed the name to Ostbahnhof, replacing only the HAUP. You can go to the Buchstabenmuseum to see the old letters. So cool. And, the intern also told me that the head of the museum was the main adviser to the makers of Helvetica for the part of the film in Germany. Even cooler.

We're not done yet. Alex, the intern, pointed me to the Kulturforum, where there is currently an exhibit called "Schrift als Bild" about medieval and early modern typography. There were some cool old choir books and bibles with ornamental scripts. But, the best part was the woodcuts from the 16th century. Albrecht Dürer and his helpers created during the reign of Kaiser Maximilian I some humongous woodcuts that were on display. Most notably, a woodcut titled Triumphwagen für Kaiser Maximilian I, 1522. The woodcut features a large caption created by typesetters Hieronymus Andreae and Johann Neudörffer. The description of the piece mentions the typeface and concludes: "Bald etablierte sie sich als typisch "deutsche Schrift" in der Typographiegeschichte." !!!! That was the original typeset that would become the standart Fraktur used in almost all German publications up until the 20th century.

So, my original pondering on the typeface in Die Dame led me from one place to another, to the Buchstabenmuseum, and eventually to the original piece that ever used that very typeface. I love Berlin.


Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Progress!


I gained access to Die Dame today! After a bit of discussion with several employees of the Humboldt Uni Bibliothek, I attained a visitor card and entry into the Forschungslesesaal. Success. There were all the issues of Die Dame I could ever ask for. Hopefully they prove as useful and interesting as I imagined.

I also met up with good old Dave Oxnard today and acquired a Handy, which is good. A picture for Herr Dr. Shahan is mandatory at this point:

Needless to say, I will be paying a visit very soon. Another discovery: Buchstabenmuseum!!!! Stay tuned for a detailed description of that as well as the Käthe Kollwitz museum, which I am looking forward to greatly. Until then, on to the HU Bibliothek!

Monday, January 17, 2011

First Day


I've arrived! I'm still in a jet-lagged haze bordering on losing all brain function, but Berlin is awesome. I haven't done much but wander around Mitte, so I'll show what I've got: the view from a bridge a few blocks down from where I'll be living. Stay tuned!

(Museumsinsel mit dem Fernsehturm im Hintergrund)