Tannenberg is a Fraktur-family

blackletter Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for the Danish, Norweg ...

typeface, developed between 1933 and 1935 by

Erich Meyer Erich Meyer (born 6 August 1951) is an Austrian engineer, amateur astronomer and discoverer of asteroids. Astronomical career Between 1996 and 1999, using the private observatory Meyer/Obermair in Davidschlag (municipality Kirchschlag bei Lin ...

at the type foundry

D. Stempel AG D. Stempel AG was a German type foundry, typographic foundry founded by David Stempel (1869–1927), in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Many important font designers worked for the Stempel foundry, including Hans Bohn, Warren Chappell, F. H. Ehmck ...

in Frankfurt am Main. The design followed the "New Typography" principles of Jan Tschichold that promoted "constructed" sans serif typefaces. It is named after the Battle of Tannenberg in 1914, in which German troops under Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff stopped the advance of Russian troops. Meyer's design for the typeface was inspired by Nazi ideology. The typeface was produced as Tannenberg (1934), Tannenberg semi-bold (1934), Tannenberg bold (1934), Tannenberg narrow (1933), and Tannenberg light (1935).

Usage

The Tannenberg font soon became very popular and was widely used. It was used on official stamps, in book and magazine design, in advertising and in Nazi Party propaganda. From about 1935 to 1941, the Deutsche Reichsbahn used the Tannenberg typeface on station signs. These signs can still be seen on some stations of the Berlin North-South S-Bahn, which opened in 1936. Excerpt from the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt (Evangelical Church in Germany, January 1946)">Evangelical_Church_in_Germany.html" ;"title="Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt (Evangelical Church in Germany">Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt (Evangelical Church in Germany, January 1946) Like all blackletter typefaces, Tannenberg was hardly used in official documents after Martin Bormann's "Schwabacher#History, normal type decree" of 1941 ordered that Fraktur-style typefaces be no longer used. Nothing changed to reverse this policy with the end of the Nazi regime in 1945. However, in 1946, among other things, the " Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt" was published in the "Regulations and News Sheet of the Evangelical Church in Germany" in Tannenberg, Saxony.

Usage

References

See also