Autumn 2019
Where was Weimar?
The Enduring Legacy of Weimar: Graphic Design & New Typography 1919-1933
By Alston W. Purvis and Cees W. de Jong. Design by Cees W. de Jong and Asher Hazelaar. Prestel £45, $60
The era of the Weimar Republic, which emerged in Germany in the wake of the First World War and the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, is renowned for many reasons: the French occupation of the Ruhr; the Treaty of Versailles’ restriction of Germany’s economic and military power; hyperinflation; the political extremism that saw criminal executions occur on the streets; and for the ways in which all of these were later raised like spectres by Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists to haunt and eventually collapse the German political order during his rise to power in the early 1930s.
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Cover for The Enduring Legacy of Weimar. Design by Cees W. de Jong and Asher Hazelaar.
Top. Spread from The Enduring Legacy of Weimar showing Herbert Bayer’s designs for inflation bank notes.
Alex J. Todd, design historian and writer, London
Read the full version in Eye no. 99 vol. 25, 2019
Eye is the world’s most beautiful and collectable graphic design journal, published quarterly for professional designers, students and anyone interested in critical, informed writing about graphic design and visual culture. It is available from all good design bookshops and online at the Eye shop, where you can buy subscriptions and single issues.