Bauer foundry

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The Bauersche Gießerei was a German type foundry founded by Johann Christian Bauer in Frankfurt am Main in 1837 . Frankfurt had lost its leading position in the book trade to Leipzig , but had remained the city of writings.

history

Relocation to Bockenheim

Former Bauersche foundry in Frankfurt-Bockenheim, Hamburger Allee

In 1872 the company moved to the still independent Bockenheim and produced from 1878 to 1904 in expanded rooms near the Bockenheimer Warte .

Weak phase

The company almost perished at the end of the 19th century, as the company's management assumed that type casting would be automated but not setting . With the inventions of the universal type casting and finishing machine as well as a useful typesetting machine , the large sales area of newspaper and book printing seemed to be lost.

Realignment

In 1898, Georg Hartmann, a new owner, took over the company and reorganized it. Well-known type designers, artists, including Lucian Bernhard , Konrad Friedrich Bauer (not related to the company founder), Walter Baum , Heinrich Jost , Imre Reiner , Friedrich Hermann Ernst Schneidler , Emil Rudolf Weiß and Heinrich Wieynck designed new and more beautiful fonts for the company from then on. The technical operation was also completely redesigned.

Bauer Bodoni , Bernhard Antiqua, Folio , Futura , Imprint and Weiß Antiqua are among the best-known fonts from the Bauer foundry .

New upswing

A new factory building was built in 1904 in today's Hamburger Allee (formerly Moltke-Allee). It is considered an exemplary example of the Bockenheim industrial architecture by architects Josef Rindsfüßer & Martin Kühn in forms of industrial youth style. The most modern machines at the time were installed here. Together with the artistic endeavors, the turning point was achieved and orders rose again. In 1914 there were 400 workers and 100 machines.

As a result, the foundry also grew through numerous takeovers, for example in 1916 that of the Frankfurt type foundry Flinsch, which itself was a global company. In 1927 an office was opened in New York.

End point

In 1972, activities at the Frankfurt headquarters were discontinued and transferred to the former subsidiary Fundición Tipográfica Neufville in Barcelona, ​​and from 1995 to Bauer Types, SL, which still holds the rights to numerous fonts. These are distributed by companies such as Monotype, Adobe, Paratype, URW ++, Elsner & Flake, and by Neufville Digital in particular Futura ND and Elizabeth ND.

Today's use of the building

The former building of the Bauersche type foundry is now a media center. Advertising and other media companies, such as B. Walter Lürzer's , the private Galli-Theater, the cinema-restaurant Orfeo's Erben and the institute for socio-ecological research are or were housed there.

  • Frankfurt-Bockenheim Hamburger Allee 45, historic Bauersche foundry, world-famous typographic industry

  • Frankfurt-Bockenheim, former Bauersche foundry, interior

  • Frankfurt-Bockenheim, European School of Design, part of the former Bauer foundry

  • Frankfurt-Bockenheim, part of the facade of the former Bauer foundry

  • Frankfurt-Bockenheim, former Bauersche foundry, interior

  • Frankfurt-Bockenheim, forest of signs in the outer area of ​​the former Bauer foundry

Publications

  • Konrad F. Bauer: On the history of the Unger fracture. Special print from the Gutenberg yearbook, 1929. Bauersche Gießerei, Frankfurt a. M.
  • Eberhard Hölscher: Speech at the opening of the exhibition "The type artist ER Weiß" on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday in the Rudolf Blanckertz Type Museum in Berlin, 1935. Bauersche Gießerei, Frankfurt a. M.
  • Greif, a story of the printer's heraldic animal, 1939. Bauersche Gießerei, Frankfurt a. M.
  • A family tree of the font, 1962. Bauersche Gießerei, Frankfurt a. M.

Web links

Commons : Bauersche Gießerei  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

See also