GEBRAUCHSGRAPHIK
September 1931
H. K. Frenzel [Editor]
H. K. Frenzel [Editor]: GEBRAUCHSGRAPHIK. Berlin: Gebrauchsgraphik, September 1931. Original edition [Volume 8, Number 9 ]. Parallel texts in German and English. Quarto. Side stitched and perfect bound printed wrappers. 84 pp. Illustrated articles and trade advertisements. Multiple paper stocks. Elaborate graphic design throughout. Wrappers worn and chipped to spine, but a good or better copy.
9.25 x 12.25 vintage magazine with 84 pages of editorial content plus trade advertisements. Gebrauchsgraphik utilized the latest printing and press technologies and often included custom colors, bound-in samples and advertising fold-outs, foil stamps, die-cuts and other special finishing effects.
The latest and greatest contemporary examples of The New Typography are in full display throughout this issue, published in 1931 before the National Socialists consolidated power and actively began censoring, denigrating and destroying all semblances of Modernism in German culture.
- The Architecture of Light by Otto Firle: 8 pages with 8 beautifully printed images on black paper
- Technique and Economics of Advertising by Illumination by Erwin Halm: 10 pages with 10 beautifully printed images on black paper including work by Otto Firle and Schiemichen
- Advertising by Light by Erwin Halm: 13 pages with 13 beautifully printed images on black paper including work by Otto Firle
- Georg Trump by Dr. Georg Bettmann: 11 pages with 18 b/w illustrations
- A Great Pioneer of Parisian Advertising Art: Nectar of the House of Nicholas by Roger-Louis Dupuy [20 pages with approx. 30 b/w illustrations including work by Dransy, Atelier Draeger, Marcel Jeanjean, Carlegle, Charles Martin, Loupot, Paul Iribe and A. M. Cassandre among others
- Einiges uber den Plakatanschlag in Deutschland BDG-Mitteilungen by W. L. Gebauer
- Sensationsbedurfnis und Gebrauchsgraphik Standige Austellung fur Werbegraphik am Kurfurstendam 153 by Traugott Schalcher
- Der Vermieter von Reklameflachen hat keine Pficht zur Fernhaltung der Konkurrenz by Dr. Krentz
- Sieben Milliarden Kaufkraftminderung im Jahre 1931: Wo wird am meisten gespart? By Dr. W. Puttkammer
Founded in 1923 by Professor H. K. Frenzel, Gebrauchsgraphik was the leading voice of the Avant-Garde influence on the European Commercial Art and Advertising industries before World War II. In the thirties, all roads led through Berlin, and Gebrauchsgraphik spotlighted all of the aesthetic trends fermenting in Europe -- Art Deco and Surrealism from Paris, Constructivism from Moscow, Futurist Fascism from Rome, De Stijl and Dutch typography from Amsterdam, and of course the spreading influence of the Dessau Bauhaus. A journal that was truly international, presented in both German and English.
Gebrauchsgraphik was in the perfect place to showcase all the latest and greatest European trends and rising artists for the rest of the world. Gebrauchsgraphik was an incredibly influential journal and agenda setter, most notably to a young man in Brooklyn named Paul Rand. According to his biographical notes, Rand's exposure to Gebrauchsgraphik in the early thirties created his desire to become a Commercial Artist. The rest is history.
Design Historian and all-around mensch Steven Heller on H.K. Frenzel: “This is not the anniversary of H.K. Frenzel's birth (1882) or death (1937) but it is the commemoration of both, decades much too late.
“While researching another project through scores of issues of his historic magazine, Gebrauchsgraphik: International Advertising Art, I came across a benignly covered edition from November 1937.
“Do the math . . . that was four years after the rise to power of the Nazis in Germany, where Dr. Frenzel's magazine began publishing in 1924. This issue had many advertisements for Black Letter typefaces and an ad for ALA (Allgemeine Anzeigen Gesellschaft), which was the German advertising society to promote German newspaper and periodical advertising in Germany, which served as the Nazis' own advertising. The magazine also had features on a host of "sanctioned" German gebrauchsgraphikers, who belonged to the Reich Chamber of Commercial Arts.
“Dr. Frenzel was not pleased with the Nazification (Gleichschaltung ) of his magazine, which had never taken an overt political stand. In 1937 Frenzel died of a "bug" he caught while in Italy. Although he had recovered, seemingly it was more virulent than the doctors had thought-or so the story goes. Nonetheless, rumors quickly surfaced that he took his own life.
“The memorial article in the November 1937 issue by E. Hölscher begins, "Our late friend H.K. Frenzel would certainly not have wished that an attempt should be made in the following lines devoted to his memory to give renewed expression to the profound and general dismay caused by his unexpected decease. He himself was much too optimistic and interested in the present to indulge willingly in melancholy thoughts for any length of time, and even beyond the circle of his more intimate friends the grief and sympathy even among those who had only met him once were so really heartfelt and genuine that they require no further confirmation as evidence of general respect which he enjoyed."
“And yet, his admirers were moved to celebrate how the magazine-his creation-"on which he worked with absolute devotion until the lasts days of his life, has been subjected to certain changes in the course of fourteen years." Meaning over the last four the Nazi dictates against modern and culturally un-German content was verbotten.
“Frenzel wrote "The works reproduced by me in Gebrauchsgraphik are entirely in accordance with the idea I have adopted as the policy of my periodical. I wish to circumscribe a circle covering what can be regarded as good present-day graphic art. If I were to take to publishing only what satisfies me completely I should have to adopt a certain policy, and the periodical would no longer reflect the present state of graphic art."
“True to his word, Frenzel published many approaches from all over the world. The common denominator was quality. Whether modern or classical, comic or serious, experimental or traditional, he maintained a level that set the standard. With the Nazis in power, his circle had been excruciatingly tightened, his standard had dropped, his life was not worth living.”