VEB Typoart

VEB Typoart was the only type foundry of East Germany. It was a state-owned enterprise ("Volkseigener Betrieb") located in Dresden. The foundry's most influential art directors were Herbert Thannhäuser and Albert Kapr.

VEB Typoart
Volkseigener Betrieb
IndustryType foundry
Founded1948
Defunct1995
HeadquartersDresden, Germany

History

VEB Typoart was created by the government of the German Democratic Republic in 1948 through a merger of several nationalised type foundries, including Schelter & Giesecke (1945) and Ludwig Wagner AG (1960). It was subordinated to Zentrag, a state enterprise coordinating all GDR printing activity. Typoart's principal mission was to create typefaces for Eastern Germany and other Eastern Bloc countries. It was frequently ordered to plagiarise Western typefaces that Zentrag could not afford to license.[1]

In the course of German reunification, Typoart was privatised as Typoart GmbH in 1989 and went bankrupt in 1995. The copyright status of its typefaces remained uncertain, and some of them have been reissued in digital form by other type foundries.

Typefaces

Typoart's typefaces included:

  • Biga (1985, Fritz Richter)
  • Demeter (P. A. Demeter), originally cast by Schriftguss.
  • Faust-Antiqua (1959, Albert Kapr)
  • Fleischmann (1927, Georg Belwe), originally cast by Wagner Foundry.
  • Fornier (1922, P. A. Demeter) [2]
  • Freundschaft (1962, Lin Yu-Bingnan)
  • Garamond, based on the ATF design of 1917.
  • Leipziger Antiqua (Albert Kapr)
  • Magna Kyrillisch (Albert Kapr)
  • Minima (Karl-Heinz Lange)
  • Mimosa, a knock-off of Copperplate Gothic, originally cast by Weber.
  • Neutra (Albert Kapr)
  • Prillwitz Antiqua (Albert Kapr)
  • Publica (Karl-Heinz Lange)
  • Supra (Karl-Heinz Lange)
  • Super Grotesk (Arno Drescher), later digitized as FF Super Grotesk and Bitstream Drescher Grotesk
  • Stentor (Heinz Schumann)

References
  1. Leslie Kuo (5 October 2007). "VEB Typoart: The East German Type Betriebsstätte". PingMag.
  2. Jaspert (p.83) gives the date of 1922 for this type despite the foundry only coming into existence more than twenty years later. Perhaps this is a legacy type from one of the absorbed foundries.
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