VEB Typoart

The foundry's most influential art directors were Herbert Thannhäuser (until 1963) and Albert Kapr (until 1987).

[1] VEB Typoart was created by the government of the German Democratic Republic in 1948 through a merger of several nationalised type foundries, including Schelter & Giesecke (1945), Schriftguss AG (1951), Ludwig Wagner AG (1961), and Norddeutsche Schriftgießerei (1961).

[1] From 1970, it was subordinated to Zentrag, a state enterprise coordinating all GDR printing activity.

It was frequently ordered to plagiarise Western typefaces that Zentrag could not afford to license.

[1] Many of Typoart's fonts and other works were lost at this time, including original matrices of Tschichold's type Saskia, although employees managed to save some matrices, original drawings and digital data.