Justus Erich Walbaum (1768–1837) is a figure practically unknown in Poland. He cut his fonts from around 1796 in a foundry located in the Free City of the Empire, which was then Goslar. After the city was occupied by Prussia, he cut them in Weimar (from 1803). His fonts were popular in Poland at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Before Didot's fonts appeared and settled on the Vistula with Tadeusz Mostowski's publishing house and, a little later, Napoleon's troops. Walbaum owed his popularity in our country undoubtedly to prints originating from a small German duchy, Saxony-Weimar (from 1809 Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach). Thanks to its extraordinary ruler, Prince Charles Augustus, this state became the center of German intellectual life, which went down in history as Weimar classicism. Here lived and worked, among others, Christoph Martin Wieland, Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller. In nearby Jena, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel were active. Of course, Weimar at that time was not an academic centre of the rank of Berlin, Leipzig, Hamburg, Frankfurt or even Königsberg, but it was here that the best German literature of its time was created. Incidentally, this speaks well of Walbaum as an entrepreneur: he perfectly sensed the opportunity offered by the seemingly provincial Weimar. The success was completed by finding an excellent business partner there, the publisher Friedrich Justin Bertuch.
Walbaum next to Bodoni
Alongside Giambattista Bodoni, Firmin and Pierre Didot, Walbaum is one of the most outstanding creators of fonts called neoclassical. In this respect, he beats the now almost forgotten Johann Karl Ludwig Prillwitz hands down. Although Prillwitz created his fonts several years earlier (in April 1790), Walbaum's works were more popular. Although the excellent publisher Georg Joachim Göschen printed his books in Leipzig with Prillwitz's fonts. And so it remains to this day. Unlike the fonts of Bodoni, Didot or Prillwittz, they have retained the charm of humanist fonts, originating from Renaissance printing in Italy.
His Weimar studio operated for a long time, from 1803 to 1836. In the same year, Walbaum sold it to a German publishing company belonging to Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus.
Our edition is somewhat modeled on the Viennese one. It was set in the Monotype Walbaum font and printed in the format 160×225 mm with a volume of 96 pp. on Conqueror Connoisseur cotton paper. 30 copies were printed.17.10.2019
