Elizabeth Friedlander

Elizabeth Friedlander was born in 1903 in Berlin to a rich Jewish family and she studied typography with E.R. Weiss at the Berlin Academy.

Right after school she worked for a German fashion magazine called Die Dame and in 1933 George Hartmann asked her to design a typeface for Bauersche Giesserei.

She designed Elizabeth (Roman and Kursiv and a Bold that was never completed or produced) but she was unable to name the typeface Friedlander, as she had wished, because it was a recognizably Jewish name. Her typeface was finally cut in 1939 but she had already left Germany because of the war.

She went on to Italy and then later in London where she eventually worked with Jan Tschichold at Penguin Books doing pattern designs.

The best (and only) book written about her is Pauline Paucker’s New Borders: The Working Life of Elizabeth Friedlander.

In 2005, Andreu Balius, a Spanish designer, was commissioned to digitize the typeface now sold by Neufville Digital.

Elizabeth Friedlander was born in 1903 in Berlin to a rich Jewish family and she studied typography with E.R. Weiss at the Berlin Academy.

Right after school she worked for a German fashion magazine called Die Dame and in 1933 George Hartmann asked her to design a typeface for Bauersche Giesserei.

She designed Elizabeth (Roman and Kursiv and a Bold that was never completed or produced) but she was unable to name the typeface Friedlander, as she had wished, because it was a recognizably Jewish name. Her typeface was finally cut in 1939 but she had already left Germany because of the war.