Gothic Vs Modern: Letterforms and Graphic Design in Weimar Germany

This is a recording of a lecture held on Tuesday 24 February at St Bride Foundation with Paul Stirton.

In 1922, the young designer Jan Tschichold travelled to Offenbach to meet Rudolf Koch, the presiding genius of German “Schriftkunst” (lettering art) and designer of the finest Gothic typefaces. This was a key moment, revealing two competing views of letterforms in German culture, contrasting historicism with modernism, nationalism with universality, and expressionism as opposed to the machine aesthetic of the Constructivists. In the event, Tschichold turned away from Koch, looking instead to El Lissitzky, Kurt Schwitters, and László Moholy-Nagy, pioneers of the New Typography. In this talk, Paul Stirton will explore these debates of the 1920s and beyond, tracing the development of two opposing views of modernity in German culture.

Paul Stirton is Emeritus Professor of Modern European Design History at Bard Graduate Center and editor of West 86th, a Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture (University of Chicago Press). He is the author of many books and exhibition catalogues, including: Burne-Jones and William Morris: Designs for the Aeneid and the Kelmscott Chaucer (Fitzwilliam Museum, 1996), “Is Mr. Ruskin Living Too Long?” Selected Writings of E. W. Godwin on Victorian Architecture, Design and Culture (White Cockade, 2005) with Juliet Kinchin, Jan Tschichold and the New Typography (Yale University Press, 2019) and NKF: Piet Zwart's Avant-Garde Catalog for Standard Cables, 1927-1928 (Letterform Archive, 2024).