An exciting-sounding exhibit is coming up at the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz! Entitled Berthold Wolpe: Type Designer, Book Designer & Emigrant, it sounds like it will be a retrospective of Wolpe’s life and work. The show will run from September 8 through November 5, 2006, with an opening on Thursday night, September 7.
The Albertus™ typeface, a design by Berthold Wolpe.
Berthold Wolpe (1905–1989) was born in Offenbach, Germany. His career as a designer began as a student at the Technische Lehranstalten in Offenbach (today the HfG Offenbach). There he became a member of Rudolf Koch‘s Offenbacher Wekgemeinschaft . Wolpe would teach afterwards in Offenbach and in Frankfurt. While he was teaching, he began designing commercial typefaces.
In 1935, because if his Jewish backgroud, he was forbidden to continue working as a designer in Germany. Wolpe emigrated to England, where he designed the Albertus, Pegasus, and Sachsenwald Gotisch typefaces for Monotype. As a German national living in Britain after the outbreak of the second World War, he was briefly interned in 1940. From 1941–1978, he worked as a book designer for Faber & Faber in London.
Today, the only Berthold Wolpe typeface available in digital format is Albertus.
I plan to attend the opening on Thursday, and will post more information about the exhibition afterwards.
More information is available via:
The exhibition website
A biography PDF for Berthold Wolpe on the Klingspor Museum website
Albertus is a trademark of Monotype Typography.