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Jan Tschichold (1902-1974) was one of the 20th century’s most important book and type designers. He worked in the context of the Bauhaus and had a lasting influence on typography after the Second World War. The German Museum of Books and Writing dedicated an extensive exhibition and a memorial plaque to the typographer during Bauhaus centenary year 2019. His estate was handed over to the museum in 2015, and since then has been more in demand for international research than almost any other collection. The German Museum of Books and Writing has launched a virtual exhibition dedicated to typographer Jan Tschichold to mark the completion of the digitisation project.

Design sketch for the Uhertype photo typesetting machine: "Dreiviertel Fette Grotesk". It shows a black letter surrounded with correcting fluid. CC BY SA 4.0

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Jan Tschichold: Design sketch for the Uhertype photo typesetting machine: "Dreiviertel Fette Grotesk", 1933, NL Tsch / 165 / 3-1

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Project Digitising Jan Tschichold’s estate

The cooperative project by the German Museum of Books and Writing and the University of Erfurt, which was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), provides free access to Jan Tschichold’s estate from anywhere in the world. Digital access to the collection is particularly important to preserve the pages, some of which are extremely fragile.

The project has now made more than two thousand works that can be legally published in the internet and are accessible online all over the world in the form of some 23,000 scans. Most of these works are designs by Jan Tschichold himself dating from 1918 to his death in 1974. The scans and their metadata can be researched in the catalogue of the German National Library and will also be available via the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (German Digital Library) and Europeana in the future.

The bundle can be downloaded free of charge in DNBLab under licence CC-BY-SA 4.0. DNBLab also provides access to the metadata, which has been enriched with the vocabulary used by the Integrated Authority File (GND). This means that Tschichold’s individual designs and book projects can now be searched by place of origin, client, publisher and subject heading for the first time. The materials in the estate have been catalogued using the “Ressourcenerschließung mit Normdaten in Archiven und Bibliotheken“ (Resource Cataloguing with Authority Data in Archives and Libraries - RNAB) standard

An analysis of the estate data revealed the genres for which Tschichold most often created designs. The four most common genres are title pages, covers, protective covers and book bindings Grafik: DNB, CC BY SA 3.0 DE

Most of Tschichold’s works digitised during the project consisted of book designs for various publishers. Designs for fonts, commercial prints and occasional prints are available as high-resolution scans. The digitised materials encompass designs from various creative periods: early works from his time at the Leipzig Academy, designs from the New Typography spectrum and drafts for his font Sabon to book designs dating from the last few years of his life. The digitisation project was strictly limited to works in which no other persons hold rights or which are already in the public domain. Those of Tschichold’s designs which contain photographs or texts by unknown third parties, for example, are therefore excluded. The CC-BY-SA 4.0 license now allows free access to the works for the first time, thus responding to international interest in Tschichold's life's work.

A data analysis has revealed those of Tschichold’s clients for which the most digitised material is available online. The three clients whose names occur most frequently are the publishing companies Birkhäuser, Penguin Books and Holbein. Grafik: DNB, CC BY SA 3.0 DE

Research information

Various options are available for researching the digitised part of Jan Tschichold’s estate:
Direct access through the catalogue of the German National Library displays all the 2,184 resources which are freely available online. You can access the digitised works by clicking on “Medium öffnen”. Each data set containing an electronic reproduction is mirrored by a data set for the original archived in the German Museum of Books and Writing.

To the catalogue

An initial – but not yet complete – comprehensive catalogue of Jan Tschichold’s (book) designs was created during the course of the project “Digitising Jan Tschichold’s estate”. The data sets include a category titled “Work(s)” which specifies the book, edition or final graphic design for which Tschichold prepared the draft. For works from the book design spectrum, for example, the following information is provided for each book designed by Tschichold: author, title, places, linked person/corporate body and year. The table listing the works stored in the data sets is available for downloading. The free text search function in the portal can also be used to search for Tschichold’s drafts from the book he designed.

Comprehensive Catalogue of Jan Tschichold’s designs 63kB, zip - Not barrier-free file.

You can also access the entire data set through DNBLab. The data set can be downloaded free of charge in METS/MODS-xml format through the OAI interface.

DNBLab: Access to data sets and digital objects

Symposium Digital Material. Digitized collections in cultural heritage institutions.

The German National Library’s German Museum of Books and Writing held an international symposium on 15 and 16 September 2021 marking the completion of the Jan Tschichold digitisation project, which was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Titled “Digital material. Digitized collections in cultural heritage institutions”, the symposium used Jan Tschichold’s legacy of work as an example to engage with the analysis and visualisation of digital collections and address questions relating to the curation of digital objects. The symposium took place live at the German National Library in Leipzig and was simultaneously streamed online.

The German Museum of Books and Writing is one of many institutions in Germany and overseas which archive parts of Jan Tschichold’s material estate – significant portions of which are housed at his places of work in Germany, Switzerland and the UK. The first day of the conference saw institutions from these three countries come together for the first time and jointly examine Tschichold’s life’s work. One the second day of the conference, digital humanities (DH) experts from Europe and the USA discussed questions relating to the digitisation of cultural heritage: how do we successfully transform the material into the digital? What opportunities do DH tools offer for visualising, curating and analysing digital collections? What possibilities does machine-based learning open up for image-based collections?

Tschichold’s material legacies at international museums, archives and libraries

Jan Tschichold’s estate at the German Museum of Books and Writing consists exclusively of work-related materials. These include designs, business correspondence with clients, but also documents from third parties that Tschichold kept for his work as a designer, particularly extensive typeface samples from various type foundries. The materials held in Leipzig do not include private correspondence, Tschichold’s posters with the relevant drafts, or his extensive private library.
Besides the German Museum of Books and Writing, there are a number of other public institutions which house collections dedicated to Jan Tschichold. You are welcome to contact these.

Last changes: 09.02.2021

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