already is Baroque (Tilman Riemenschneider), so the types of the German
Renaissance are really baroque. This can be seen in the curly ornamented
movements of the main stems, the snouts of the capital letters, indeed in
the handwriting of the time (which is still today the official German hand!)
with its over-decoration of large initial letters.
In the Baroque and Rococo periods following the Renaissance, fraktur
changed very little; not until the end of the 18th century were attempts
made to reform it. Fraktur was used almost only in Germany: other coun
tries either never used it, or gave it up after a ;:;hart time.
Books of the Renaissance, the Baroque, and the Rococo, set in fraktur, all
look pretty much alike, and are differentiated from the books set in roman
only by their type. The domination of centred setting sometimes gives
German books a stronger, more "colourful" appearance because of the
nature of fraktur type. Proportions and general style were the same in
German and Latin-style books. Title-pages of books set in fraktur often
looked garish and clumsy because of the use of too many type sizes and
too many lines in red - but this also happened in books set in roman. Not
until the end of the 18th century did a lighter look come into both kinds of
book, with more leading, less complicated headings, smaller sizes of type,
etc.
Towards the end of the 18th century the punch-cutters Didot, Bodoni,
Walbaum, and others completed the transformation of the Medievai
Antiqua into the so-called Franziisische Antiqua. The success of Antiqua
(roman) types on the Continent at this time was due not only to their clar
ity but to the influence of the French Rococo in the so-called culture
countries. Under its influence Peter the Great in Russia at the beginning of
the 18th century caused the cyrillic types to be brought closer to the Latin
forms. Leading German typecutters already saw the fraktur types as old
fashioned, medieval. The efforts of Unger (Unger-fraktur) and Breitkopf
(the so-called Jean-Paul-fraktur) show how concerned the feeling then was
to bring the external appearance of fraktur closer to roman. The character
istic quality of the Franziisische Antiqua types showed itself in their
increasing departures from pen forms. If the older romans and their italics
show clearly, in their details, their imitation of pen and occasionally chisel
strokes, the types of Didot are the archetype of the engraved letter - no
corresponding written or chiselled forms exist. The complicated individual
movements of the Medievai-Antiqua are replaced by the simpler, more
"regular" line of the Didot-Antiqua. The letters convey a much clearer
effect, closer to their essential characters. The new "Em pire" style, which
brought in the Didot types with it, led to a certain typogra phical revival, a
elle
(Elle)
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