FE-Schrift

[2] The abbreviation "FE" is derived from the compound German adjective fälschungserschwerend combining the noun Fälschung ('falsification') and the verb erschweren ('to hinder').

The motivation for the creation of the typeface arose in the late 1970s in the light of terrorism by the Red Army Faction when it was discovered that with the then-standard font for vehicle registration plates—the DIN 1451 font—it was particularly easy to modify letters by applying a small amount of black paint or tape.

The original design for the FE-Schrift typeface was created by Karlgeorg Hoefer who was working for the Bundesanstalt für Straßenwesen (Federal Highway Institute of Germany) at the time.

The typeface was slightly modified according to the results of tests that lasted from 1978 to 1980 at the University of Giessen (Department of Physiology and Cybernetic Psychology).

The first priority was a requirement for readability by humans and machines as the decade was the same that saw the development of other typefaces for optical character recognition, namely OCR-A and OCR-B.

The RAF terrorism however allowed to fund a project over a couple of years — running from the functional scope document being created in 1977 to the final decision of 1982 to not introduce the design on license plates.

[2] The legal typeface includes umlaut vowels as these occur in German county codes at the start of the license plate number.

With the fall of the Iron Curtain there was again a spike in the theft rate of license plates, including cars being stolen and moved to Eastern Europe.

[12] Specifically in Europe some countries started to adopt the style of registration plates of the European Union even before becoming full members.

In October 2014 the members of the Mercosur South American trade bloc agreed to introduce a common design for license plates.

In other countries, such as Algeria and Ireland, FE-Schrift is permissible where registration plates are owner provided, under their prescribed design regulations.

Some countries have developed a typeface for license plates with similar features: Albania since 2002, Georgia since 2014, Guinea, Hungary since 2022, New Zealand, Netherlands, Serbia and Slovenia (from 2004 until 2008).

A demonstration of attempted alteration of characters set in the FE-Schrift typeface. The series "PBF" (top row) is modified to read "R3E" (middle row, in red). The correct appearance of the series "R3E" is shown in the bottom row.
Variant of the FE-Schrift as used on Hungarian license plates since 2022