— Historic, linguistic and typographic context
— Sample 1 (German style-switching typography, 1698)
— Sample 2 (German style-switching typography, 1698)
— Sample 3 (Lithuanian style-switching typography, 1563)
— Samples 4 and 5 (Bilingual typography and style-switching in Prussia, 1685 & 1806)
— Experiments in style-switching typography (print, e-book and web)
— First conclusions

In 16th-century Prussia, letterpress was widely used as a mass medium to spread new religious and academic concepts (mainly of the growing Protestant faith and pietism). During a timeframe of roughly 250 years, books and leaflets were printed in various letterpress offices, centered around places such as Halle (Saale), Gdansk, or Koenigsberg (present-day Kaliningrad), the latter being of special historic interest for her role in Polish and Lithuanian publishing. While the whole region served as a base for protestant missionaries, she was also an exchange hub for scholars from all origins.1
In the 17th and 18th century, Latin was still a vidid world language used by scholars throughout Europe. During this period, peaking in the 1690s, Roman typefaces were used within the context of the common German blackletter to distinguish words or parts of words from Latin or Romance origin. The decline of ‘style-switching’ in later Prussian letterpress converges with the growing dominance of the national languages in printed media, gradually amplified by increasing nationalism in the respective countries.2

Contrary to Meiji Japan, where an existing script (Katakana) was standardized to spell all non-Chinese loanwords, Prussian bookprinters used ‘style switching’ to provide the desired linguistic clarity. Being a part of my current research on multilingual typography, I would like to share a theory which may be of special interest to methods of republishing and re-contextualizing original material from this context.
The phenomenon is well-rooted in contemporary discourse3. However, it is either rarely contemplated that the German-speaking community, contrary to speakers of Roman languages, had adopted Latin as a distinctively foreign language, encouraging them to develop their own unique way of typographic mark-up. Apart from that, blackletter typography was also temporarily common to Polish and Lithuanian media. I am, in turn, discussing this complex of subjects under the wing of multilingual typography, because Latin was, even though a firm element of written German, regarded an international language (‘lingua franca’) before the early 1700s.4

The first sample was chosen to show a strong sense of the style-switching/multi-style phenomenon.

This 20-page brochure (1698) by August Hermann Francke (1663, Lübeck – 1727, Halle), director of the orphanage “Franckesche Stiftungen” in Halle (Saale), then part of Brandenburg-Prussia under Frederick III (1657–1713, the later king Frederick I in Prussia) could be regarded today as a ‘business plan’ for the newly founded institution. It was printed in situ by Christian Henckel, university letterpress printer. The following images were taken from a reprinted copy available in the museum shop.5

As soon as a page is dominated by figures and dates, such as in this list of donations to the orphanage, the appearance changes drastically, letting Roman type play the dominating role, only to be interrupted by blackletter elements. An increased use of Roman interpunction can be observed, though, again, not fully done.

This double page is about as mixed-up as it gets.

A 14-page concession (grant of rights) issued by Frederick III to August Hermann Francke for his orphanage in Halle (Saale), printed by Henckel as well, is different in terms of bigger type sizes and frequent usage of decorative forms to emphasize representative and administrative aspects. These stylistic mark-ups are, however, not present in the Roman parts of the text, although they would have been technically possible (i.e. by usage of italics or swash forms).

Martynas Mažvydas, a Lithanian priest with a degree from Albertina University in Koenigsberg, edited and published the first printed Lithuanian book, a translation of Luther’s “Small Catechism”, in 1563. The book was printed in Hans Weinreich’s Königsberg-based letterpress office, using Schwabacher for the Lithuanian, and Roman for the Latin passages, but, again, not fully consequently, as already the cover page shows.

The Edict of Potsdam, issued by Frederick William of Brandenburg-Prussia in 1685, encouraged oppressed Huguenots to immigrate from France and granted them freedom of worship in their native French.6 This bilingual German-French version combines a vertically-arranged cover page (German above, French below) with horizontal juxtaposition of the languages (German left – French right) on the following pages. With regard to the 1806 sample shown later, the upper/left position was propably regarded as taking the leading role, followed by the lower/right position, therefore the German text would be presented as the more active part. While the German side features decorative forms in the first line to emphasize the representativeness of the medium, the French side shows italics, however in places of secondary importance. The main headline (“Edict/Edit”) is capitalized on both sides, making it shared in style (though not shared in terms of language). The version shown here has 19 pages, the back cover apparently being left empty.7

In my new multi-script (and, of course, multi-weight) typeface “Koex Text”, style-switching between Roman and blackletter is an integral part of the design concept. The font family is designed to serve simplicity and an intended ‘lack of character’ (German term “Charakterlosigkeit” in its positive sense). The blackletter drawing is mainly inspired by Prussian publications such as seen in samples 1 and 2, although the vertical metrics were more tightly adjusted to one-another. OpenType features such as onum; liga; and especially dlig; are required to meet the demands, as well as decorative caps under the swsh; feature. However, it is crucial to clarify that a letter such as ſ cannot be automatically substituted from s, being a matter of typing rather than coding, as well as the letter-accented forms, such as aͤ, which donot equal to their present-day equivalents (ä or adieresis), requiring the ccmp; feature to work properly.

I.
It can be stated that the convergence of blackletter and Roman typefaces in Prussian printed matter (in a main timeframe from around 1530 to the early 1700s) may well be regarded as a multilingual markup within German-language texts, because at the time, the idea of ‘foreign terms’ was not yet fully recognized as a fixed ingredient of national languages, but rather as an element of vivid Latin, then still an educated world language in its own right (‘lingua franca’). Only when the presence of Latin in literature and education receeded, around the year 1800, in favor of the ‘national language’, were terms of Latin origin fully re-defined as German ‘foreign terms’ and therefore no more regarded as to be highlighted by typographic means. We can thus consider the style-switching phenomenon as a multilingual texture within a unilingual text, highlighted by multi-style (though uni-script) typography.

II.
We can also conclude that many essential problems of multilingual layout can be found in the Prussian samples (mainly sample 4), as to decide which language takes the lead, which elements could be shared, how to organize the text in order to share a common rhythm on a double page or throughout the whole medium, etc. These questions are present all the same when it comes to multi-script typography, such as Chinese-English media in Hong Kong. Style-switching in Prussian media should therefore not be marginanlized in the context of multilingual typography research.

III.
Style-switching was also present in handwritings of the period, though not displayed here.

IV.
As seen in the first Lithuanian printed book (sample 3), it can be stated that style-switching is not exclusively a German phenomenon, but also present in early Polish and Lithuanian typography, thanks to the influence of letterpress offices in Gdansk, Königsberg and other cities.

V.
If we regard style-switching a markup method to display an understanding of languages which is different to today’s, it may make sense to pay more respect to this phenomenon in contemporary copies of the respective media. Digital typography (especially webfont technology) offers a multitude of ways to ease up the process even for non-typographers. High quality fonts are the key to a more divers and precise culture of historic reproduction, taking into account the materiality of type.

VI.
My own typeface development, the Koex Text family, actually serves as a medium to display parts of my own research in a coming publication on multilingual design. I am also planning to publish it and try to collaborate with academic institutions in order to achieve first results of its usage.