Kapr wrote a number of beautiful books, and was a big supporter of fraktur types.

There is a museum of printing in Leipzig that you might contact.
http://www.druckkunst-museum.de/

And you could try to get some info from the Hochschule für Buchkunst und Grafik in Leipzig

My co-researcher speak very basic german. So that might be a problem in translation. I have tried to get some of Kapr's books through British Library but were unable to get my hands on them. But I will try to contact Ingo and Andreas to see if they can help.

You might also try to contact Erhard Kaiser. I think he used to work for Typoart.

arno dreschers super grotesk and renners futura were also quite popular in the gdr.

ff city street type based on old east and west-berlin street signs.
http://www.fontshop.de/sukr.php3?searchtype=fo-kw&fsdsess=&ch=search.php3&fl=y&searchtext=city+street

Yes, we found the city stree type interesting as well. Especially the 'scharfesf' character (try pressing alt 's' to view it).

Love that sharp S. It works more in harmony with lowercase letters
than the standard eszet with bulky ascender.

Hmm, yes I agree. The uppercase one seem to look to much like a 'B' than a sharp 'S'. But until recently due to my ignorance of the German language, I kept pronuncing it as a 'b' rather than an 's'! I just thought it was a german way of writing the letter 'b'. Gosh, the Arial version looks rather clumsy, but that's Arial for you.

It's funny that the pattern you prefer comes from the confusing definition of the 'Scharfes

Getting back to the original subject. I used to know Albert Kapr. He was a fine type and book designer, calligrapher and typographer. But his greatest accomplishment, in my opinion, was that he managed to preserve and develop the fine art of type and book design in the Communist Germany. In fact, he was a devout Communist himself, and he managed to convince his fellow Parteigenossen, in both Leipzig and Berlin, that the quality of book design and printing is important for the image (and the economy!) of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik.

Kapr was one of the founding fathers of the prestigeous annual book design competitions (Sch

I used to work and live at Typoart in Dresden from 1990 to 1992 when it was privatized. I have a book from VEB Typoart about its history.

In a few ways, most notably with stroke stress and the tail, the German

Here's a list to that typografie thread:

http://www.typografie.info/portal/mod.php?mod=forum&op=threadview&topicid=300&forumid=2

and one more from that site about the design of the double s:
http://www.typografie.info/portal/mod.php?mod=forum&op=threadview&topicid=102&forumid=2

Erik, could you perhaps share some of your experiences at TypoArt? What were the changes that you could see from its GDR days to when it was privatised? And is there any way I can get a copy of the TypoArt book? I was trying to do a search on the net for the existing TypoArt but it seems that the only one that comes up is a pre-press production house. From what I read, they do not produce fonts anymore.