Friedrich Nies (type founder)
Friedrich Nies (* 1804 or 1808 ; † 1870 in Leipzig ) was a printer and type founder and famous for his hieroglyphic fonts.
In 1829 he acquired the Deutrich'sche Offizin in Leipzig, founded in 1746, and renamed the company Friedrich Nies'sche Buchdruckerei und Typgießerei . In addition, he set up a stereotype and type foundry in 1831 and achieved something unusual with regard to the creation of printing types in a wide variety of alphabets and scripts. He became famous for his types of hieroglyphics , which were created around 1836 according to Moritz Gotthilf Schwartze , and later also by Gustav Seyffarth according to the same pattern . In 1840 he was able to print in about 300 languages.
Schwartze writes about him:
"What feed Mr. It was said there that science had never achieved anything by introducing hieroglyphic writing into typography. The hieroglyphic writing also conditioned the production of the hieratic and demotic writing, of which the same has already had a considerable part cut. But the ancient Egyptian as well as the Coptic script are only a part of the gigantic enterprise which Mr. Nies intended to do it. He came up with the great idea of expanding the typefaces of his printing house to the extent that, with the exception of the musical field, they would be able to meet scientific needs to the greatest extent, especially research into older and newer languages. How far Mr. Nies have already realized this idea, one can assume from the fact that in addition to the Occidental (Greek, Romance, Germanic, Slavic) and Oriental (Semitic) scripts contained in the better printing houses, the following are now available in his Officin : Phoenician , Old- Hebrew , Old Aramaic , Numidian , Palmyrenic , Kufic , Old Greek, Gothic , Runes , Slavonian , cuneiform , Sanskrit , Zend , Pehlwi , Bengali , Georgian , Armenian , Burmese , Tibetan , Manchurian . "
In 1856 Nies sold the printing company to the Dane Carl Berendt Lorck , who however kept the name. In 1867 the jury of the Paris World Exhibition declared that in France only the imperial printing works could do something similar to the Leipzig printing press. In 1868 the company was sold to Wilhelm Eduard Drugulin and renamed Offizin Drugulin . The company was one of the roots of Offizin Andersen Nexö Leipzig , which existed until April 9, 2015.
Fonts
Friedrich Nies wrote two papers about the type foundry.
- Samples from the type foundry, stereotype foundry and book printing , 1835 in own publishing house
- Address book for papermakers, type foundries, book printers and booksellers , 1837, at Barth in Leipzig
literature
- Karl Zimmermann: Hieroglyphs from the Friedrich Nies type foundry. Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt 2012.
Web links
- Literature by and about Friedrich Nies in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ^ Catalog of the German National Library
- ^ A b Karl H. Salzmann: Drugulin, Wilhelm Eduard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 139 f. ( Digitized version ).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Nies, Friedrich |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Printer and type founder in Leipzig |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1804 or 1808 |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1870 |
| Place of death | Leipzig , Germany |