This seems to have a strong similarity the Meier’s “Barbedor” italic, but the g is wrong, and other details don’t match, even though the feeling and style seem very similar to me. He also did “Syndor”, but it is also no more than similar. The calligraphic style also made me think of the Zapfs, but Gudrun’s “Nofret” and “Christiana” are only superficially similar.

If it’s German and pre-digital it may be hard for many of us to locate good samples of typefaces from this country & time. For me, Jaspert is about my only resource for this. Where is Georg?

- Mike Yanega

I was hoping someone would throw out some other ideas. I’d like to find out what this is too.

Anyone? (I checked Georg’s site for his type samples, and didn’t see this among them.)

- Mike Yanega

Thanks for your interest. It’s got certainly nothing to do with Hans Meier’s work, that is for sure. And it doesn’t look Zapfy to me either. I will try to find a source at the publisher.

– JW

just double posting ...

I think I found the answer. I looked in a German book of Schreibschriften and found a font called “Prima”, which my notes showed was also included in the Jaspert book. It was a Stempel typeface from 1957, designed by Martin Hermersdorf. The text says that this “pen-drawn type was used by the Moritz Diesterweg educational publishing house in reading primers”.

I overlooked it before, because it was included in the scripts, and I thought it was an italic face.

- Mike Yanega

A Google search for Stempel Prima came up with this page, which seems to indicate a different designer for this typeface. This closeup shows “Prima” well enough to prove this is the right type.

- Mike Yanega

Nice job, Mike!
Just confirming: Global Type also credits Karlgeorg Hoefer with being the designer of Prima.

Martin Hermersdorf was a student of Rudolf Koch. He reworked Koch’s Offenbacher Schrift, a German Kurrentschrift to be written with the broad-nipped pen. Bavarian schools used this ‘Koch-Hermersdorf-Schrift’ as a secondary script in the 1950s. Hermersdorf also is the author of several books and was a member of the Iserlohner Schreibkreis. As far as I know, he hasn’t designed any typefaces.

Florian, Thanks for the Global Type reference. I haven’t seen that one before, and it looks very helpful.

I also found Hoefer credited for “Prima” in the book “Typography” by Friedl, Ott & Stein, so the information in Jaspert’s book is certainly wrong.

- Mike Yanega