A new approach

Combining elements of fraktur and sans serif, as seen in Krimhilde, remained an exception rather than the norm. A more compelling path toward a modern blackletter lay in looking further back—to the moment when blackletter first diverged from the roman script. This earliest form, known as textura (or Gotisch in German), was still handwritten. Its letters were tall and narrow, not especially easy to read, and often carried a distinctly calligraphic and ornamental character. By stripping away some of this complexity, it became possible to envision a modern, legible blackletter—one that could serve as a graceful bridge between roman and blackletter styles, both of which coexisted in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s.

An early modern textura typeface was Wieynck-Gotisch by Heinrich Wieynck, released in 1926. The typeface was published in a bold style and an inline style (shown above). A regular weight for copy texts called Wieynck-Werkschrift (image below) was added in 1930.

Interestingly, we also have a good idea of the thinking behind the typeface, as a book outlining Wieynck’s guiding principles for modern type design was published using his own typeface. In it, Wieynck acknowledged the ongoing movement to simplify letterforms, but he already found this trend somewhat tiresome and regarded it as merely a stepping stone. Wieynck-Gotisch was his attempt to create something modern while remaining faithful to traditional letterforms and their customary decorative elements.

In the end, however, it was his own typeface that became the stepping stone. The design paved the way for the successful modern blackletter fonts of the 1930s, all of which followed the textura model—but in a much clearer and more concise form.