Instead of having a monumental triumphal arch built, he got Dürer to print a monumental poster of a triumphal arch, and had copies of it stuck up in all the public places.
> the origins of Fraktur, that typeface having been commissioned by Maximilian I
It’s interesting to learn that Fraktur itself only dates back to the 16th century — the broader blackletter family of scripts goes back 400 years earlier than that, and was once used across the whole of western Europe.
BTW, Oliver Heaviside campaigned against Fraktur "German letters must go!" and I have to admit the do not look really good in math formulas, at least to my taste. He even claimed Germans would get short sighted by reading Fraktur (I didn't find the quote on the internet, so I have to look that up in my library if anyone is interested)
Interestingly, the eye complaint was a recurring one about various novel typefaces, esp. see Benjamin Franklin's autobiography where he substitutes text set in Caslon (the old approved standard) for Baskerville (the upstart the person he was with didn't like).
I wonder how much that's due to reverse polarization causing modern far right to copy Nazis from Hollywood or videogame depictions of Nazis, which tended to use Fraktur as a signifier.
If you read the article, it's ideologically consistent - the main motivation in abandoning Fraktur was strategic (i.e. military), not ideological. I'm pretty sure the "actually Fraktur is Jewish" argument wouldn't even have come up if Hitler and Goebbels hadn't already pushed for adopting Latin script. The Nazis weren't exactly pragmatists but they were always opportunists.
Also the modern far-right in Germany has an undercurrent of monarchists, we've just lost the political language to label them as such - much like how we unironically refer to conservatives as "centrists" because referring to anyone but a nazi as "right-wing" is often implied to have certain undertones, although the conservative party that helped pass the Enabling Act was literally called the Christian Center Party.
And although the Nazis weren't exactly ideologically coherent - fascists generally aren't - the driving ideology in the modern German far-right (including within the AfD) is actually völkisch nationalism which the Nazis were at least making heavy use of in their propaganda.
I'd even argue remnants of völkisch nationalism even made it into the German constitution: it uses the term Volk and Volkszugehöriger (in Art. 116 Abs. 1 GG) without defining either of them. The definition of Volk instead had to be provided by a constitutional court ruling - German citizens plus Volkszugehörige - and that second term is defined in a seperate law (§ 6 BVFG) which uses a very narrow and arbitrary definition that's clearly a condensed bureaucratic remnant of a much broader ideological pre-existing definition (arguably the consequence of having to deal with a similar problem as laws trying to combat racism that want to avoid validating "race science" by pinning down exact definitions for each relevant category)[0].
Also in German popular culture the colloquial definition of "Deutsch" seems to be very much colored by völkisch ideas: someone who is "ethnically distinct" (e.g. skin color, eye shape) is generally regarded as a "migrant"/"foreigner" even if they are German citizens, speak fluent German, are culturally German and have multiple generations of direct ancestors who lived in Germany.
[0] Source: Bundestag white paper "Zu den Begriffen „deutsches Volk“, „Deutsche“ und deutsche Volkszugehörigkeit“ im Grundgesetz":
Same fun when they couldn't decide if they were for or against Sütterlin scripture.
They also like to drive Simson motorcycles.
Despite the Simson family being Jewish (and publicly calling out against the AfD).
They dress with "Fred Perry" -- look it up yourself, how paradox that is.
The right-wing likes to talk about the German heritage of the "Dichtern and Denker" (poets and thinkers) and yet the Third Reich was stupid enough to kill or at least exile most.
They like to talk about /clean blood/, /natural order/ despite biology having a different opinion which it clearly shows when inbreeding happens (also due to xenophobia).
Their /family values/ are indistinguishable from the islamists they pretend to fight.
...
The list of paradoxes never ends.
...
Remember December 2025, when Marco Rubio ordered diplomats to return to using Times New Roman font in official communications, calling his predecessor's decision to adopt Calibri a “wasteful” diversity move ?
In a choice of either Times New Roman or Calibri, I would think that Times fits the US State Dept better. Calibri is a relaxed, modern typeface, while Times is classical and majestic. (The word "stately" also comes to mind.)
It would probably be better if State Department would get their own typeface -- as opposed to picking one from MS Office defaults -- but even then, I'd argue for Antiqua style (serif). SCOTUS, for one, is using Century Schoolbook.
P.S. I don't care at all about Rubio, Dem-Rep divide, "diversity" vs "wastefulness" debate, or any of the arguments brought from either side in 2023 (when they changed Times to Calibri) or 2025 (when they switched back).
The use of Century Schoolbook by the Supreme Court is more a matter of their accepting the default selection of the Government Printing Office (GPO) --- before they switched to using Adobe InDesign, their updated design manual was available as a PDF typeset by "ACOMP.exe" (anyone know anything about it? Apparently it was a custom typesetting tool which made PDFs from XML?) which was visually indistinguishable from an earlier edition style guide I had printed during WWII (with a note about paper shortages in it).
It's hard to explain, but serif typefaces have centuries of history behind them, with practically all the books (in Europe and America) using some variant of serif since basically the invention of movable type. You can add most of newspapers to this list (notably "Times" part comes from a font being cast for the British newspaper The Times in 1930s.) The Roman Empire is a source of these (just look at the inscription on the Pantheon[0]), so that's for the "Roman" part. Using serif fonts signifies "tradition". Using sans-serif signifies "modernity". Being "stately" is more about the former than the latter.
Interestingly, the building that houses the State Dept[1] has its style defined as "Modern Movement" and "Stripped classical", which is interesting, because it's somewhere in the middle between modern and classical, while not being quite any of them. To me, it looks mostly bland; I'd much rather have an office in Congress building, or Supreme Court building, or the White House, all of which are strictly classical.
Serif fonts in general are more formal (or "stately"). That's because of the, well, serifs. Sans-serifs visually resemble/evoke handwriting because in handwriting we don't make serifs. Try writing with serifs for everyday stuff and it will quickly reveal to be visually and logistically annoying.
The only question is which brand of formal do you want to evoke. TNR feels very straightforward and no-nonsense to me. So I wouldn't really object to associating it with bureaucratic memos and documents. For something more leisurely I'd go with either Garamond or Georgia. Georgia is my favorite but it's a bit too fancy for long texts. It's better suited for quotes.
As an aside, I hate that Introduction to Algorithms [CORMEN] uses a TNR-like font. It makes it look like a Physics textbook. They could've stayed with default Computer Modern and strengthened my Pavlovian conditioning to it. Whenever I read something in Computer Modern, my heart palpitates a little in the way it did when I sat through my Data Structures exams.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumphal_Arch_(woodcut)
Instead of having a monumental triumphal arch built, he got Dürer to print a monumental poster of a triumphal arch, and had copies of it stuck up in all the public places.
It’s interesting to learn that Fraktur itself only dates back to the 16th century — the broader blackletter family of scripts goes back 400 years earlier than that, and was once used across the whole of western Europe.
Of course, these wannabe guys use the proper fraktur. They usually use the wrong s and don't care about proper ligatures.
"The rejection of modernism"
And many of them use Fraktur wrongly (in particular: wrong usage of long vs round s; not using compulsory ligatures).
Also the modern far-right in Germany has an undercurrent of monarchists, we've just lost the political language to label them as such - much like how we unironically refer to conservatives as "centrists" because referring to anyone but a nazi as "right-wing" is often implied to have certain undertones, although the conservative party that helped pass the Enabling Act was literally called the Christian Center Party.
And although the Nazis weren't exactly ideologically coherent - fascists generally aren't - the driving ideology in the modern German far-right (including within the AfD) is actually völkisch nationalism which the Nazis were at least making heavy use of in their propaganda.
I'd even argue remnants of völkisch nationalism even made it into the German constitution: it uses the term Volk and Volkszugehöriger (in Art. 116 Abs. 1 GG) without defining either of them. The definition of Volk instead had to be provided by a constitutional court ruling - German citizens plus Volkszugehörige - and that second term is defined in a seperate law (§ 6 BVFG) which uses a very narrow and arbitrary definition that's clearly a condensed bureaucratic remnant of a much broader ideological pre-existing definition (arguably the consequence of having to deal with a similar problem as laws trying to combat racism that want to avoid validating "race science" by pinning down exact definitions for each relevant category)[0].
Also in German popular culture the colloquial definition of "Deutsch" seems to be very much colored by völkisch ideas: someone who is "ethnically distinct" (e.g. skin color, eye shape) is generally regarded as a "migrant"/"foreigner" even if they are German citizens, speak fluent German, are culturally German and have multiple generations of direct ancestors who lived in Germany.
[0] Source: Bundestag white paper "Zu den Begriffen „deutsches Volk“, „Deutsche“ und deutsche Volkszugehörigkeit“ im Grundgesetz":
https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/643190/7855da277bbd33...
References:
Art. 116 GG: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_116.html
§ 6 BVFG: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bvfg/__6.html
You cannot argue with stupids
It would probably be better if State Department would get their own typeface -- as opposed to picking one from MS Office defaults -- but even then, I'd argue for Antiqua style (serif). SCOTUS, for one, is using Century Schoolbook.
P.S. I don't care at all about Rubio, Dem-Rep divide, "diversity" vs "wastefulness" debate, or any of the arguments brought from either side in 2023 (when they changed Times to Calibri) or 2025 (when they switched back).
See:
https://www.govinfo.gov/collection/gpo-style-manual
and contrast 2000 to 1984 and earlier.
Interestingly, the building that houses the State Dept[1] has its style defined as "Modern Movement" and "Stripped classical", which is interesting, because it's somewhere in the middle between modern and classical, while not being quite any of them. To me, it looks mostly bland; I'd much rather have an office in Congress building, or Supreme Court building, or the White House, all of which are strictly classical.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S_Truman_Building
The only question is which brand of formal do you want to evoke. TNR feels very straightforward and no-nonsense to me. So I wouldn't really object to associating it with bureaucratic memos and documents. For something more leisurely I'd go with either Garamond or Georgia. Georgia is my favorite but it's a bit too fancy for long texts. It's better suited for quotes.
As an aside, I hate that Introduction to Algorithms [CORMEN] uses a TNR-like font. It makes it look like a Physics textbook. They could've stayed with default Computer Modern and strengthened my Pavlovian conditioning to it. Whenever I read something in Computer Modern, my heart palpitates a little in the way it did when I sat through my Data Structures exams.