![]() ![]() Instead, it was used all across Europe.īlackletter may seem incredibly ornate like it was created for the sole purpose of turning letterforms into little individual flourishes of art. But to understand how people’s feelings about a simple typeface got to this point, we need to go back to the moment of its birth.īecause once upon a time in that bygone era of knights and castles and feather quills, blackletter wasn’t limited to Germany. Today, depending on one’s perspective, blackletter can either represent German culture’s rich and proud heritage or alternatively symbolize everything that’s wrong with it. A debate in which the use of blackletter often serves as a kind of symbolic dividing line. ![]() The sign that Peter saw that day would end up causing a big stir in Germany and get folded into an ongoing debate surrounding racism, nationalism, and culture. The one thing that really drives the point home. It sends a signal emphasizing the ‘Germanness.’Įven if it was in a neutral font, it would still have been a problematic thing, but it’s kind of like the cherry on top. The blackletter typefaces as a genre have been associated with German nationalism for a long time and everybody who sees them today knows that it’s not a standard choice. The message by itself is not welcoming and has this nationalist tone, but the font choice adds to that.įlorian Hardwig is a graphic designer in Berlin and the editor of a website called, ‘Fonts in Us.’ He says that in Germany when it’s not being used on a band tee or masthead, blackletter has a very specific set of connotations. Which is why it was pretty clear to Peter and the other passengers on the bus what was going on with this bus driver’s sign. Today in Germany, blackletter typefaces are frequently used by Neo-Nazi groups and for many Germans, they bring to mind the dark times of the country’s fascist past. If you’ve ever caught even one minute of the ‘History Channel’ or really any documentary about World War II, you have seen this typeface on Nazi posters, on Nazi office buildings, on Nazi roadwork signs, usually saying something like ‘Verboten’ with a big exclamation mark. Just days earlier, the world was at the brink of war and in France and Great Britain reluctantly signed on to the Munich Pact.” “October of 1938, Adolf Hitler made his triumphant entrance into Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland. I’m not that good with history and stuff, but what I know is that the font that was used by Nazi Germany, really, really, looks the same way as this. Put it on a page and it brings to mind the time of castles, knights and feather quills.īut for many people, especially in Europe, blackletter is most closely associated with one thing. In which in English goes by a different name, blackletter.īlackletter is the type of old-timey Gothic typeface that you often see used for the bold front titles of newspapers like the ‘New York Times’ or ‘Washington Post.’ You might also see it on tattoos or the T-shirts of heavy metal bands. You can talk to me in German because I am one of the good ones and not a foreigner.īut what really drove the message of this sign home was not just the words but the typeface they were printed in.Ī typeface from a larger family of typefaces once used throughout Germany and commonly referred to as Fraktur. But the implication to me was this is a good bus. I can only interpret that the person who put up the sign would have said. When I got on the bus, I see that the bus driver had put up a sign inside of the bus that said in German ‘Diesen Bus Steuert ein Deutscher Fahrer,’ which means: ‘This bus is driven by a German driver.’Ī homemade sign saying ‘this bus is driven by a German driver,’ was not the kind of thing Peter was used to seeing on his daily commute.īut to Peter, the driver’s message was pretty clear. Peter lives in Dresden, Germany, where he works in elder care visiting clients at their homes and to do that, he usually takes the bus, but that morning he noticed something unusual as he boarded. I was going to go to work and I’ve only been awake for like half an hour or something, so I was still a bit woozy. Early one Monday this past December, Peter Dörfell started his week the way most of us do, which is to say, reluctantly. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |