Welcome to Stefan George Digital

At the moment three works of Stefan George are transcribed, encoded, and enhanced with corresponding facsimiles. Further works will follow in Summer 2015.
The subject matter of the study will be the lyrical work of the German poet Stefan George (1868-1933). George has engaged with script in exceptional ways: from 1897 on he almost completely abandoned his cursive handwriting, using instead highly stylized block letters. The members of the George-circle, the intellectual group around the author, were expected to apply the same writing style in order to strengthen the circle’s identity. As a result, the numerous correspondences and drafts transmitted in this so-called Stilschrift cannot always be clearly assigned to a specific scribe.
From 1904 on, George applied a specific typeface to his printed publications as well: the 3rd edition of ‘Das Jahr der Seele‘ was the first volume in the so called St.-G.-typeface, which emerged when the German dispute between Antiqua and black letter (Fraktur) typefaces was in full swing. Accordingly, St.-G. forms a third, alternative typeface class inspired by modern Grotesk typefaces but also showing features of ancient Roman and Carolingian scripts. Until 1927 this particular typeface has been modified several times with the result that there is not a single definitive, the one St.-G.-typeface, but various versions of it.