Hellmuth Tschörtner

Hellmuth Tschörtner (born September 1, 1911 in See , Rothenburg / Ob. Laus. † April 3, 1979 in Leipzig ) was a German painter and graphic artist who was particularly successful as a commercial artist and book designer.

Life

Tschörtner began his training in 1930 with the commercial artist Fred Gravenhorst (1896–1977) in Leipzig. At the end of 1932 he moved to Liberec in the ČSR and worked there, among other things, as a set designer for the city theater. From 1935 he attended the German Art School in Liberec and finally returned to Leipzig in 1938. There he worked as a graphic designer at the Graphic Art Institute G. Rebner & Co. and at the same time attended evening school at the Academy for Graphic Arts and Book Industry . From 1940 to 1945 he was used as a soldier in World War II .

After 1945, the freelance graphic artist Tschörtner turned primarily to font and book design. He created numerous steel engraved font cards for the Oberlausitzer Kunstverlag and posters for the Leipzig Trade Fair Office and the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and designed book covers for Insel-Verlag Leipzig, Neumann-Verlag Radebeul, Paul List Verlag and Edition Leipzig . For the Leipzig exhibition Most Beautiful Books from All Over the World in 1968 he designed the special award Golden Letter , a gold-plated replica of Type a from Gutenberg's Textura .

Original Tschörtner Antiqua, 16 point lead type

A comparison of the fonts shows considerable differences.

At the beginning of the 1950s, at the suggestion of Horst Erich Wolter , Tschörtner began drafting a typeface , which was finally published in 1955 as Tschörtner-Antiqua with the associated Tschörtner-cursive by Herbert Thannhaeusers VEB Typoart Dresden / Leipzig for hand typesetting and linotype .

In 1973 Tschörtner was awarded the Gutenberg Prize of the City of Leipzig for his “outstanding achievements in the field of book art” .

literature

Hans-Joachim Walch: On Hellmuth Tschörtner's writing . In: Marginalien (1970) 37, pp. 44-47.
Walter Weller: Special catalog on the Hellmuth Tschörtner estate . Saxon State Library, Dresden 1986 ( digitized version of the SLUB Dresden ).

Individual evidence

↑ There is no faithful version of the Tschörtner Antiqua for digital typesetting. A “soulful reinterpretation and cautious further development” called Toshna (Andreas Seidel, Astype / GTF), published in 2008, dispenses with the distinctive features of Tschörtner's typeface (such as the capital letter U, which is based on the lowercase u ). On closer examination it can be established that the lining figures of the capital letters were partially changed considerably, for example in C, W . The dot on the i sits higher, so it can hardly be undercut ( Wi ), because the dot is no longer under the serif of the W, it overlaps; the normal numbers are larger, etc. See also information on Toshna. GTF German Type Foundry, archived from the original on February 12, 2015 ; accessed on February 12, 2015 .

personal data
SURNAME	Tschörtner, Hellmuth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH	September 1, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH	Lake (niesky)
DATE OF DEATH	April 3, 1979
Place of death	Leipzig

[Toshna-1] There is no faithful version of the Tschörtner Antiqua for digital typesetting. A “soulful reinterpretation and cautious further development” called Toshna (Andreas Seidel, Astype / GTF), published in 2008, dispenses with the distinctive features of Tschörtner's typeface (such as the capital letter U, which is based on the lowercase u ). On closer examination it can be established that the lining figures of the capital letters were partially changed considerably, for example in C, W . The dot on the i sits higher, so it can hardly be undercut ( Wi ), because the dot is no longer under the serif of the W, it overlaps; the normal numbers are larger, etc. See also information on Toshna. GTF German Type Foundry, archived from the original on February 12, 2015 ; accessed on February 12, 2015 .