“What’s going on?” Aaron asked as he pulled on a T-shirt, his eyes adjusting to the bright kitchen light.
I stood up from my folded-over position, wiped away the tears, and shared the news. The email had been from the New York Type Director’s Club—an international organization whose sole purpose was to support excellence in typography. The email announced that of the nearly two hundred submissions from twenty-nine countries, P22 Marcel Script had been one of twenty-four winners in their annual type design competition. It was the world’s premier type design competition. Fourteen winners were from abroad; ten were from the United States. That was why I had to read the email multiple times before I was certain I was seeing my name—Marcel’s name—on the list.
Judging had been blind. Entries could not reveal the name of the font, the name of the designer, or the font’s story. Winners had been chosen solely on artistry and craftsmanship. I did not know how entries were typically formatted, but I wanted to highlight Marcel’s beautiful swash M, the p with the high lead-in stroke, his unusual ss. The entry featured the large words “Mighty Mississippi,” accompanied by a poem about a long, meandering river.
All those nights and weekends.
All those hours fretting over the tiniest nicks and curves.
All those times I tossed work and started over.
All those years second-guessing and testing.
All that work had been validated in that single email.
I shared the news first with the family in France. Then I told Kathy, Tom, Dixie, and Louise. Then I shared the news with my college Letterform instructor, Professor DeHoff.
In six months’ time, an awards ceremony and exhibition opening would take place in New York. Aaron and I would go. It would be his first visit to New York City. We would stay at a hotel one block off of Times Square; I would finally get to see the bustling landmark.
At the awards ceremony and exhibition opening, luminaries in the world of typography—men and women whose work I had admired for years—drank wine and mingled. One person I was delighted to run into was Roger Black, one of the three judges who had critiqued the font nearly two years earlier in Milwaukee. He offered hearty congratulations when he saw the font displayed on the gallery wall.
On the wall, the l in Marcel’s name entwined with the calligraphic swirl whose pen strokes overlapped to create a heart. I showcased letters a through z, numerals 1 through 9, and a phrase from one of Marcel’s letters, written first in French, then in English: “Et toi, mon aimée, c’est toujours mes plus tendres baisers, que cela réserve.” And for you, my beloved one, I always save my most tender kisses.
No one attending the awards ceremony and exhibition opening could have guessed the emotions that surged through me that evening. Some of what I felt was pride in the award, but most of it was for much larger reasons. An exhibition of winning entries would travel to Canada, England, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Russia, Spain, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam. In each country, people would learn Marcel’s name. They would see his writing. They would read his words of love.
The trip to New York was still months away, though. In that moment—as I stood in the kitchen, wiping the still-streaming tears from my eyes—I chastised myself for getting so emotional about the announcement. It was unlike me. It did not make sense that an award would open a floodgate of tears, and it took months before I fully understood why it happened.
The font had become so much more than a collection of curves, loops, and lines.
It had become a way to immortalize Marcel’s love.
It had become a way to honor his life.
It had become a way to keep the middle-of-the-night promise I made that he would not be lost to history.
Marcel’s family had been generous to share stories and photos with me, but I understood he was unequivocally only theirs: their father, their grandfather, their great-grandfather.
But this—the font—would forever be my Marcel.
About This Book
On the day I decided to have the first letter translated, I could not have guessed the search for answers would become a book. If I had, I would have kept meticulous research notes. Absent that documentation, I have endeavored to faithfully recreate the timeline of events. To do that, I relied on calendar entries, credit card receipts, emails, FedEx delivery slips, letters, phone bills, photographs, project time logs, screen grabs, and social media posts. Events in Paris were recorded in a travel journal.
The first five of Marcel’s letters have been printed in their entirety, though minor spelling, capitalization, and punctuation changes have been made. The twelve subsequent letters have been lightly edited to eliminate redundant or unclear passages. A few paragraph breaks have been added to aid readability.
Professor DeHoff’s critique comments were taken from actual Letterform class assignments completed in the spring of 1989.
A video recording was made available of one of the 2012 Type Crit sessions.
A few original emails and letters cited incorrect dates or ages; corrections have been made to eliminate confusion. Minor grammar and spelling errors have been corrected.
Where possible, I have asked others to review dialogue to ensure conversations were accurately recounted.
Within the Heuzé family, accounts sometimes differ about Marcel and Renée’s wartime experiences. I have attempted to respectfully navigate these differing recollections; any errors made while reconciling these accounts are, of course, mine.
Should any additional information be unearthed about Marcel’s time in Germany, about the letters’ journey to Clignancourt, or if additional letters are found, I will share that information on my website: www.carolyn-porter.com.
This book is typeset in Adobe Caslon, which was designed by Carol Twombly in 1990, and is based on the letterforms of William Caslon (1693–1766). The cover includes the font Tryst, which was designed by Kosal Sen, and inspired by letterforms of John Baskerville (1706–1775). The book’s title, along with the dates at the beginning of each chapter, are typeset in P22 Marcel Script Pro.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I want to express my deep gratitude to the Heuzé family. Thank you for sharing Marcel and Renée with me; thank you for trusting me to tell their story. I hope this book honors them by telling a remarkable love story that lasted sixty years, and transcended war and separation.
French privacy laws prohibit the publication of Marcel’s letters without explicit approval from Denise and Eliane. My profound gratitude goes to Valentine and Tiffanie for helping facilitate those approvals. And to Agnès, Nadine, and Natacha for answering endless questions, mapping out the Heuzé family tree, sending photos of the cottage and property in Berchères, and for cooking the best five-course meal I ever had.
I am grateful to Aaron, for everything, over and over again.
To Kathy Horton, for being a tireless cheerleader and remarkable friend. Kathy passed away from glioblastoma sixteen days before the manuscript was submitted to the publisher. She was one of the first people to read draft chapters, and she always asked for updates on the book. Her spirit is irreplaceable, and I know she continues to cheer from beyond.
To Louise Dillery and Tom Hazen, for giving Marcel a voice.
To Dixie Hansen, for giving Marcel life.
To Kim Salmela, for bringing Marcel’s letters to the US and for generously sharing the twelve additional letters in her possession.
To Wolfgang Rabus, for providing information in Daimler’s archives and for unwavering diplomacy with my many questions.
To Richard Kegler, Carima El-Behairy and the team at P22 Type Foundry, for helping usher P22 Marcel Script into the world.
L–R: Kathy Horton, Carolyn, Louise Dillery, Dixie Hansen, Tom Hazen
I am also grateful to Jill Swenson and her team at Swenson Book Development, for guidance and advocacy.
To Maxim Brown, my editor at Skyhorse Publishing.
To Katherine Kiger, copyeditor
extraordinaire.
To Sharlene Martin of Martin Literary Management.
To Franklin Ennik, for sharing his expertise in chemical censoring.
To Robin Nussbaum, for providing insight on how to talk about the swastika.
To Timothy Eaton, John DuFresne, Susan Hunt, and particularly to Bill DeHoff, professors at UW-Stout for fostering a love of design and typography.
To Craig Eliason and the Twin Cities type community for continual inspiration.
To Mark Simonson for helping with some particularly complicated lines of OpenType code in P22 Marcel Script.
To the friends who sustain me. A special thanks to Jennifer Colletti, who, at the point in time when it looked like I was not going to receive permission to write the book, told me I needed to write this story even if I could never show it to anyone. Thanks to Garnett and Mike Duenow, Laura Davies, and Karen Kendall; and to Michele Tegen and Shari Sterba for never letting me take myself too seriously.
To Kenneth Mouré, PhD, Professor of History at University of Alberta, for pointing out some important edits.
To the Twin Cities Creatives Group for their enthusiastic support of the font; a particular thanks to Amy Kirkpatrick for baking a delicious chocolate genoise to celebrate the font’s completion.
To Jeannine Ouellette and my beautiful, brilliant, inspiring sisters at the 2014 Elephant Rock Writing Retreat. Ready, set, jump!
To classmates and teachers at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis.
To Ken Kunkle and Frank Martinez, for legal guidance.
To Hope Dellon, whose initial interest in this story allowed me to broach the topic of a book with the Heuzé family.
To friends and colleagues who were brave enough to read early drafts of the book or of the book proposal: Ally Bishop, Carol Hunter, Kerstin March, Greg Muellerleile. And to others who listened as I figured out how to talk about Marcel’s letters.
To my clients, for their patience with my decreased availability during the final months of editing.
And to my parents, for buying the Ken Brown Method Calligraphy Kit.
Endnotes
vii Epigraph: Testimony of Stepan Saika. Billstein, Reinhold; Fings, Karola; Kugler, Anita and Levis, Nicholas. Working for the Enemy: Ford, General Motors and Forced Labor in Germany during the Second World War. New York: Berghahn Books, 2000, 171. Reproduced by permission of Berghahn Books, Inc.
CHAPTER ONE
2 Sprache Französische: Marcel wrote something that looked more like “Sprache Französiche,” which is a slight misspelling of what I believe he intended to write. This phrase also appears on other letters.
CHAPTER TWO
10 Marienfelde’s history as the site of a refugee center: Marienfelde Refugee Camp Museum, http://www.notaufnahmelager-berlin.de/en/
CHAPTER THREE
19 “Manufacturing was soon expanded to include the Daimler-Benz Berlin-Marienfelde plant.”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panther_tank
20 L’Écho de Nancy: http://www.kiosque-lorrain.fr/exhibits/show/echo-de-nancy/un-journal-de-propogande
21 “Ravensbrück was only fifty miles from Berlin”: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Learn More About the Holocaust, Holocaust Encyclopedia, “Ravensbrück,” https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005199. Last accessed September 22, 2016.
21 Ravensbrück had been the Reich’s largest concentration camp for women: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Ravensbrück.”
22 A “special kind of hell”: Saidel, Rochelle G. The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. Madison: Terrace Books, 2006. Title of chapter.
22 Men gassed the women, then burned their bodies: Saidel. The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, 20.
22 I hoped he had only been there minutes, or hours, or days: Later, I would learn more about Marcel Heuzé’s journey: He was arrested March 1943 and spent three months in the Saint-Pierre jail in Marseille. After that, he spent four and a half months in the Compiègne camp in northern France. Sometime around September 1943, Marcel was transferred to Buchenwald, then to Dora, “a labor camp for political prisoners well-known for its hellish conditions.” He left Dora in a cattle wagon on April 4, 1945. “First he went to Oslerode (Thuringia), then endured a nine-day trip without food or water to Ravensbrück, where he died April 26, 1945.” The camp was liberated four days later. Chalamet, Christophe. From Revivalism and Social Christianity: The Prophetic Faith of Henri Nick and André Trocmé. Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2013, 167.
22 Thousands of women and children: According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Germans gassed between 5,000–6,000 prisoners at Ravensbrück. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Ravensbrück.”
23 Many women were raped: Helm, Sarah. Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women. New York: Nan A. Talese/Knopf Doubleday, 2014, 624.
25 Fifty million people died in World War II: World War II fatality statistics vary, with estimates ranging from 50 million to more than 80 million. Civilian casualties 50 to 55 million. Military casualties 21 to 25 million, including deaths in of 5 million prisoners of war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_Casualties.
25 Registry of Protestants persecuted for their faith: “Huguenots of France and Elsewhere: The Site of French Protestant Genealogy.” Pastors of the Reformed Church of France. http://huguenots-france.org/english/pastors/pag23.htm#33
CHAPTER FOUR
29 One of my favorite projects from those years: 1996 annual report for The Nature Conservancy–Minnesota Chapter. Photography by Richard Hamilton Smith. Design by Eaton & Associates Design Company.
30 The lettering had been completed by a man in Florida: Hand-lettering by Jack Molloy.
32 Graphic designer Brian Willson: http://www.3ip.com; Texas Hero: http://www.3ip.com/texas_hero
41 The instructor, James: James Montalbano, http://www.terminaldesign.com/about/
44 Design professor and type designer Craig Eliason: https://www.facebook.com/Teeline-Fonts-138571842838257/
CHAPTER FIVE
51 The Germans’ tactical superiority: Chen, C. Peter. “Invasion of France and the Low Countries, 10 May 1940–22 June 1940.” World War II database. www.Ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=32
51 Two French Senegalese regiments were decimated in the fields and forests surrounding Berchères-la-Maingot: Fighting took place in the area between Chartres, Dreux, Châteauneuf-en-Thymerais, Maintenon: “Jean Moulin et le sacrifice du 26e Regiment de Tirailleurs Senegalais” from “l’Empire dans la guerre” incident des 17 et 18 Juin 1940. Collectif des Guelmois site Guelma-France. www.piednoir.net/guelma/chroniques/sacrificesenegalaiseJan07.html. For more information about the 26th Regiment de Tirailleurs Senegalais, read Echenberg, Myron. Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857–1960. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1991, 92–96.
51 After the armistice was signed … Germany exercised all rights of an occupying power: “Armistice Agreement Between the German High Command of the Armed Forces and French Plenipotentiaries,” June 22, 1940. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/frgearm.asp
51 Horses and machines were loaded onto trains: Hélion, Jean. They Shall Not Have Me: The Capture, Forced Labor, and Escape of a French Prisoner in World War II. New York: Skyhorse Publishers, 2012, 99.
51 Thousands of pigs and cows, tons of wheat, twelve million bottles of Champagne: “Nazi Plunder Leading France to Famine.” Aberdeen Journal. October 31, 1940, No. 26,782, 6.
52 “Barely enough to support life”: Vinen, Richard. The Unfree French: Life Under the Occupation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006, 218.
52 Cheese, chicken, soap: Taylor, Lynne. “The Black Market in Occupied Northern France, 1940–4.” Contemporary European History, Vol. 6. Cambridge: Cambridge University, July 1997, 154.
52 Twenty thousand Jews had been transported from France to Germany: Yad Vashem: The World Holocaust Remembrance Center. The Holocaust in F
rance, “The Deportation of the Jews from France.” http://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/france/deportation-from-france
52 “Hunted down” by Vichy’s paramilitary force: Hilberg, Raul. Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe 1933–1945. New York: Harper Collins, 1992, 89.
52 Only a couple of thousand would survive: http://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/france/deportation-from-france
52 1.8 million French soldiers taken prisoner of war: Christofferson, Thomas Rodney and Scott, Michael. France During World War II: From Defeat to Liberation. Bronx: Fordham University Press, 2006, 32.
52 1929 Geneva Conventions: International Committee of the Red Cross. Treaties, State Parties and Commentaries: Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. “Part III: Captivity, Section III: Work of Prisoners of War, Chapter 3: Prohibited Work, Article. 31.” Geneva, July 27, 1929. https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/INTRO/305?OpenDocument
52 Millions of Parisians who fled: Diamond, Hanna. Fleeing Hitler, France 1940. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, 150.
53 Twenty million working-age men had been transferred: Billstein, Reinhold; Fings, Karola; Kugler, Anita; Levis, Nicholas. Working for the Enemy: Ford, General Motors and Forced Labor In Germany During the Second World War. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000, 4.
53 Initially, German women filled jobs: Gregor, Neil. Daimler-Benz in the Third Reich. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998, 153.
53 Acquire new workers “at whatever cost”: “Fritz Sauckel (Commissioner-General of Manpower) explained the nature of his duties as follows: ‘The Führer has charged me with the task of replacing, at whatever cost, the German workers who have been called to the front for the world-wide fight … For this purpose he was given the widest powers.’” Fried, John H. E. The Exploitation of Foreign Labor by Germany. Montreal: International Labor Office, Studies and Reports, Series C (Employment and Unemployment), No. 25, 1945, 25.
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