Craft & organic · 1895–1933 · Central Europe

German Book Art Movement (Buchkunstbewegung)

Also known as Buchkunstbewegung, Deutsche Buchkunst, German private press movement, Book art movement

The German reform of the book, from the magazine Pan (1895) to the private presses that ended around 1933. After Morris's Kelmscott Press, artists, printers and publishers treated a book as one work in which text, type, illustration, paper, presswork and binding agree. A Jugendstil start of floral borders and Beardsley-like drawing gave way, from about 1900, to a typographic phase: artist-drawn romans and Frakturen, hand-press printing on handmade paper, and drawn titles and woodcut initials as the only ornament. After 1918 illustration returned, as at the Cranach-Presse.

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A sample layout drawn from the style’s design choices, until its AI image is made.

Use it with care

Fraktur carries political weight in German-speaking countries: the Nazi regime pushed it as the German script in its first years before banning it in January 1941 (see the blackletter-fraktur caution). Several of the movement's presses and artists were active up to the 1933 seizure of power, after which Harry Graf Kessler of the Cranach-Presse never returned to Germany. Check how a Fraktur page or a 'German book art' label will read, especially for anything national or political.

How it works

Design the book as one work: settle text, typeface, initials, paper, presswork and binding together, under one artist or printer-designer.
Set a single justified text block in one artist-drawn face, a roman cut after incunabula or a new Fraktur or gothic, and keep that face through the whole book.
From about 1900, let drawn titles and large woodcut initials be the only ornament and leave out borders, vignettes and printers' flowers; only the Jugendstil start (Pan, Die Insel, to about 1900) still framed the page in floral borders and vignettes and drew in a Beardsley-like line.
Print on the hand press on handmade paper or vellum, in black, adding red sparingly as a second colour.
When a book is illustrated, commission woodcuts or line drawings from artists and print them with the type on the text page.
Give cheap editions the same care: a uniform series in a small format, bound in patterned-paper boards with printed labels.

Germany, from the 1890s: Munich, Berlin, Leipzig and Darmstadt, with presses in Weimar and Bremen and, in Offenbach, the Gebr. Klingspor type foundry, which commissioned faces from Behrens and Tiemann and had Rudolf Koch as its house designer; a reform of the industrial book after William Morris's Kelmscott Press and the English private presses, carried by magazines, publishers such as Eugen Diederichs and Insel Verlag, and private presses

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition: Classical text block defining
Central symmetry characteristic
Framed panels occasional
Space & hierarchy: Measured density defining
Generous white space characteristic
Extreme scale contrast occasional
Repetition & rhythm occasional
Typography: Humanist & Garalde serif defining
Blackletter characteristic
Brush & pen calligraphy characteristic
Hand-lettering characteristic
All caps characteristic
Wide letterspacing occasional
Colour: Light ground defining
Monochrome characteristic
Limited spot colours characteristic
Form & shape: Stylised figuration characteristic
Biomorphic curves occasional
Whiplash line occasional
Surface & texture: Paper & letterpress bite defining
Carved line characteristic
Ornament: Restrained accents defining
Ornament-free occasional
Floral & vegetal occasional
Borders & frames occasional
Imagery: Typography only characteristic
Line illustration characteristic
Pattern & repeat occasional
Medium & production: Letterpress defining
Woodblock & linocut characteristic
Pen, brush & ink occasional
Tone & intent: Calm & contemplative characteristic
Utopian & idealistic characteristic
Luxurious & glamorous characteristic
Authoritative & institutional occasional
Romantic & sensual occasional
Avoids: Dynamic asymmetry, Flush left, ragged right, Grotesque & neo-grotesque, Straight photography, Halftone & Ben-Day dots, Eclectic mixing, Ornamented display, Abundant decoration

Palette

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Typefaces

Behrens-Schrift (Peter Behrens, Gebr. Klingspor, 1902; semibold 1901), followed by Behrens-Antiqua and Behrens-Kursiv
1907
Ehmcke-Antiqua and Ehmcke-Kursiv (Flinsch, 1908–1910; the Antiqua is dated 1908 or 1909/10) and Ehmcke-Fraktur
D. Stempel, 1912
Weiß-Fraktur (Emil Rudolf Weiß, 1913) and Weiß-Antiqua
Bauersche Gießerei, 1928
Walter Tiemann's faces, mostly cast by Gebr. Klingspor
Tiemann-Mediäval, Tiemann-Fraktur, Tiemann-Antiqua, Orpheus and Daphnis
Bremer Presse private types, designed by Willy Wiegand, cut by Louis Hoell and cast by the Bauersche Gießerei for hand setting
a roman after the incunabula of Adolf Rusch and Johann von Speyer, a Fraktur for the Luther Bible (1926) and a Greek for the Iliad
Rudolf Koch's Bibel-Gotisch, designed from 1924 for his Four Gospels (1926) and released by Gebr. Klingspor as Jessen
1930
Hamlet Fraktur
Edward Johnston, a black letter commissioned by Kessler in 1912 after Fust and Schoeffer's Mainz Psalter of 1457, though another account names the Durandus and Subiaco types, and cut by Edward Prince; first used in the Cranach-Presse Hamlet, 1929
Anna Simons' drawn titles and initials, in the broad-pen tradition of her teacher Edward Johnston

Known for

Pan (Berlin, 1895–1900), edited by Otto Julius Bierbaum and Julius Meier-Graefe for the PAN cooperative
five volumes, 21 issues and 225 art supplements, with Peter Behrens' woodcut 'Der Kuss' (1898)
Ernst-Ludwig-Presse, Darmstadt
(1907), founded by Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig and run by Friedrich Wilhelm Kleukens, a co-founder of the Steglitzer Werkstatt (1900), with his brother Christian Heinrich: its first book, Das Buch Esther in Luther's translation (Insel Verlag, 1908), has title pictures and initials by the brothers; up to 1914 F. W. Kleukens drew all the press's titles, initials, types and illustrations, mostly for editions of 100 to 150 copies, and it never gave up illustration and book decoration altogether
Heinrich Vogeler, An den Frühling (Insel Verlag with Schuster & Loeffler, 1899), ten etchings with a woodcut title (Met 2018.90.1–.10); Vogeler designed the magazine Die Insel (1899–1902) and its publisher's books, with vignettes, borders and bindings
Marcus Behmer, illustrations for Oscar Wilde's Salome (Insel Verlag, 1903; Met 1972.602), in a line first shaped by Aubrey Beardsley
Janus-Presse, Leipzig (1907–1923), Carl Ernst Poeschel and Walter Tiemann, called the first German private press (DNB)
its first book, Goethe's Römische Elegien, is counted the first artistic book in a purely typographic style; in all it printed five books, in Behrens', Tiemann's and Weiß's types among others
Bremer Presse (Bremen 1911, Munich from 1920), Willy Wiegand and Ludwig Wolde
Hofmannsthal, Die Wege und die Begegnungen (1913), Dante, La Divina Comedia (1921), Homer (1923–24) and the Luther Bible (1926–29); after the First World War its titles and initials were drawn by Anna Simons and cut in boxwood by Josef Lehnacker, the press's only ornament
Cranach-Presse, Weimar (Harry Graf Kessler, 1913–1931)
Virgil's Eclogues with woodcuts by Aristide Maillol (1926; Met 28.12), and Hamlet in Gerhart Hauptmann's translation (1929; English edition 1930), printed in red and black in Edward Johnston's Hamlet Fraktur, with woodcuts after Edward Gordon Craig and title capitals cut by Eric Gill
Rupprecht-Presse, Munich (F. H. Ehmcke, 1913–1934)
57 prints, set in Ehmcke's own types without decorative additions and issued in patterned-paper boards

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