Tuesday morn­ing, Decem­ber 2nd, 2008, Günter Ger­hard Lange passed away in Munich, aged 87. Lange was one of the impor­tant type design­ers and typog­ra­phers of the 20th cen­tury. He is sadly often over­looked in Eng­lish speak­ing coun­tries*. In Yvonne Schwemer-​Scheddin’s words

[the type world] lost an upright, stead­fast fighter for qual­ity in type design. Not only Berthold’s artis­tic direc­tor, but a friend and objec­tive adviser to many who needed per­sonal help or an eval­u­a­tion in type design.

(*) This is why I had to link to the German Wikipedia; there simply is no link on the Eng­lish Wikipedia.

Günter Ger­hard Lange was born in Frank­furt (Oder), Ger­many on April 12, 1921. Barely 18 years old and just out of school he was drafted into the armed forces at the begin­ning of the Second World War, and was wounded shortly there­after in France. In 1941 he enrolled at the Akademie für Graphik und Buchkunst in Leipzig. His tutors included Georg Belwe for cal­lig­ra­phy and type design, type­set­ting and print­ing; and Hans Theo Richter for draw­ing, paint­ing, etch­ing and lith­o­g­ra­phy. He grad­u­ated with hon­ours and worked in Leipzig from 1945 on as a painter and a com­mer­cial artist, and took the posi­tion of assis­tant to pro­fes­sor Walter Tie­mann – one the most impor­tant book and type design­ers of his gen­er­a­tion in Ger­many – at the Leipzig institute.

After this period Günter Ger­hard Lange moved to Berlin in 1949 and enrolled at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, study­ing free­lance art with Pro­fes­sor Paul Strecker and draw­ing with Pro­fes­sor Hans Ullman. Early in 1950 he started work­ing for H. Berthold Schriftgießerei at the Mehring­damm in Kreuzberg, ini­tially as a free­lancer. G.G. Lange would serve the Berthold brand for more than half a cen­tury. By 1961 he was appointed Artis­tic Direc­tor of Berthold AG; as such G.G. Lange has been respon­si­ble for the company’s entire type­face devel­op­ment pro­gramme since then. During that period he designed nearly one hun­dred orig­i­nal type­faces, which often dis­play a cal­li­graphic qual­ity. He also super­vised the pro­duc­tion of many more type­faces by other well known design­ers; his crit­i­cism was always appre­ci­ated, because it came from a man with a very pos­i­tive dis­po­si­tion. Fur­ther­more G.G. Lange revived sev­eral clas­sic faces, and trans­ferred the lead her­itage of Berthold’s clas­sic type­faces, first to pho­to­com­po­si­tion and then to dig­i­tal format. This was done in a sound and authen­tic manner, accord­ing to the high­est aes­thetic standards.

In 1989 Günter Ger­hard Lange received the Fred­eric W. Goudy Award by the Amer­i­can Rochester Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy (R.I.T.) for his achieve­ments in the print­ing indus­try. And in 2000 he was pre­sented the TDC Medal by the New York Type Direc­tors Club for his sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the life, art, and craft of typog­ra­phy. He spoke at sev­eral TYPO con­fer­ences and meet­ings of the AGD, the Alliance of German Design­ers. His leg­endary inau­gural address (in German) at TYPO ’96 - Idea vs. Ide­ol­ogy was released in abridged ver­sion on vinyl, and can be viewed in full length – 68 glo­ri­ous min­utes of GGL – on the TYPO videoblog.

G.G. Lange was a remark­able uni­ver­sity teacher and rare com­mu­ni­ca­tor, because he was true to his con­vic­tions and values. He was an exam­ple to many, a beacon of light. In anal­ogy to Amer­i­can preacher Billy Graham’s “God’s machine gun” Man­fred Klein dubbed him “Das Maschi­nengewehr Guten­bergs” (Gutenberg’s machine gun) in this arti­cle pub­lished in a spe­cial annual edi­tion of the Typographis­che Gesellschaft München e.V. (Typo­graphic Soci­ety Munich) at the occa­sion of Lange’s 60th anniversary.

But – accord­ing to Yvonne Schwemer-​Scheddin – per­haps most impor­tant of all

Günter Ger­hard Lange relent­lessly encour­aged the younger gen­er­a­tions, teach­ing and coun­selling until almost the end. By doing so he opened doors, eyes and hearts to art, archi­tec­ture, lit­er­a­ture and typog­ra­phy. He trans­mit­ted the value of edu­ca­tion and love for the minute details that are indis­pens­able for the whole to func­tion. We lost a pas­sion­ate type lover and expert – an authen­tic man. An era has irre­versible come to an end.

Günter Ger­hard Lange’s designs include:

• Arena New® BQ (1951–54)
• Solem­nis™ (1953)
• Boulevard® BQ (1955)
• Champion® BQ (1957)
• El Greco® BQ (1964)
• Concorde® BQ (1969)
• Berthold Garamond® BQ (1972)
• Con­corde Nova® BQ (1975)
• Berthold Walbaum® Book BQ (1975)
• Berthold Wal­baum Stan­dard™ BQ (1975)
• Franklin Antiqua® BQ (1976)
• Whit­ting­ham™ BQ (1976, with Dieter Hofrichter)
• Berthold Calson 471® BQ (1977)
• Berthold Script® BQ (1977)
• Imago® BQ (1982)
• Berthold Bodoni Old Face® BQ (1983)

Header image © Marc Eckardt
Source mate­r­ial for this entry includes Jürgen’s post on Font­blog and Yvonne Schwemer-Scheddin’s mes­sage on the ATypI mem­bers mail­ing list.

Tags: Berthold AG, Günter Gerhard Lange, H. Berthold Schriftgießerei, obituary