Der unbekannte Soldat movie poster
The Unknown Soldier is a German documentary film about the Wehrmachtsausstellung. The editors of New York made it a Critic’s Pick and wrote:
Veteran director Michael Verhoeven’s gripping documentary starts with a look at his countrymen’s response to a German exhibit detailing crimes committed by Wehrmacht soldiers during World War II, and then goes on to show how much collective collaboration and organization were required to realize the Nazis’ nihilistic vision. The director does get distracted at times, but as a bitter portrait of how ordinary people commit extraordinary crimes, this is one of the more disturbing Holocaust documentaries of recent vintage.
The display typeface is Matrix Inline. Derived from the Extra Bold weight of Matrix, this member of Zuzana Licko’s Latin is distinguished by partly open letterforms. It also has decorative diamonds inside the counters of O and Q. For “Der unbekannte” and the subtitle (“What have you done during the war, father?”), it’s paired with caps from DIN Neuzeit Grotesk, the 1970 adaptation of Neuzeit-Grotesk by the German Institute for Standardization.
The director’s credit uses a better known DIN: it’s FF DIN, Albert-Jan Pool’s improvement over DIN 1451. They are shown a bit too small here to be appreciated, but the remaining credits are set in another typeface design by Licko: it’s Senator.
Michael Verhoeven died this week at the age of 85. RIP.
The final letter in “SOLDAT” is custom made. For comparison, the glyphs for T, dagger (†), and double dagger (‡) as included in Matrix II Inline Extra Bold.
