Hermann Joseph Otto Hubert August Constantin Hupp was a German graphical artist. His main working area was heraldry, yet he also worked as a typeface designer, creating commercial symbols and metal works.
Life and career
Hupp was born in Düsseldorf, the fourth of five sons of the engraver Carl Heinrich Hupp. His father made him learn engraving as his profession, and, shortly after finishing his education, he moved to Munich in 1878. Since 1891 till his death Hupp lived in the suburb Oberschleißheim. From the painterRudolf Seitz he learned many styles of painting, and when he met the architect Gabriel von Seidl he received several contracts to paint wall and ceiling frescos. Hupp's main field of work was heraldry, painting more than 6,000coats of arms and writing books on heraldry. His Wappen und Siegel der deutschen Städte, Flecken und Dörfer, of which 51 issues were published between 1885 and 1936. Besides painting existing coats of arms, he also created many designs for municipalities which were applying for new arms. Possibly his most important coat of arms was the 1923 version for the state of Bavaria, which, however, was replaced with a new version after World War II. The first typographic works of Hupp were made in 1883. His first typeface, Neudeutsch, was published in 1899 by Genzsch & Heyse. He created several further typeface later, such as Hupp-Gotisch, Hupp-Fraktur, and Hupp-Antiqua. However, as his typefaces were not designed for standard uses, they did not spread much, and are nowadays mostly forgotten. None of them was ever converted for used in phototypesetting, though they have been made available as digital fonts. Other significant works of Hupp include metal works for Speyer Cathedral in 1904, the cover of an astronomical clock donated to the city of Munich, beer steins, and the company logo of the Spaten brewery. Though Hupp was undoubtedly an artist, he himself did not claim to be one, preferring to say that he was simply using the technique of an artist, but failing to have the creativity of one.
The ''Constance Missal''
As reference material for his work as a type designer, Hupp collected early books and incunabula. Around 1880 he purchased a copy of an incunable which came to be known as the Constance Missal or Missale Speciale. About 1895 he made a study of the volume and concluded that it had qualities in typography and production which suggested it was earlier than the Gutenberg Bible. Though he sold his copy, after several decades the argument took hold and by 1940 the Missal was recognized as predating Gutenberg's famous work. In 1954, a copy was sold to the Morgan Library for US$100,000. However, by the early 1960's further research by Allan H. Stevenson using watermark analysis demonstrated it was actually printed 20 years later than Gutenberg's work.
