In the early 1900’s, typography was in slow development, and there was not a lot of action. One of the only significant things was the work of Peter Behrens, who was a German architect and designer. He was also a painter, illustrator and bookbinder. Raised in the Bohemian area of the city of Munich, he was able to develop his artistic style from a young age.
While he was primarily working as an architect, he designed the entire AEG (Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft) Turbine factory in 1910. He designed the building, as well as the entire brand identity. From the logo, product design and all of the advertising and publicity, Behrens had a hand in everything that came out of the building.
During the process, he designed a poster that became an icon for typography and design in the early 1900’s, as Behrens is known to be the first corporate designers in history, and began the entire world of brand identity.
One of the marks left on the world on Behrens is the various typefaces he designed, including Behrens-Schrift, Behrens-Antiqua, and Behrens Mediaeval. Many of his typography designs were created as a result of the problem of blackletter, namely due to its lack of legibility. He wanted something with the same bold, formal and strong effect of the blackletter gothic script, but with less finicky lines that made it difficult to read quickly. The Behrens typeface family combined the style of the gothic type with the Jugendstil illustrative style that he was familiar with in Germany.
All common fonts in Germany up to that point had been serif heavy, but Behrens broke that trend by publishing a full book with only sans serif typefaces. After this, publishing companies followed suit and as a result, Germany began to transition from using blackletter to primarily sans serif typefaces and fonts.
References:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-1010/architecture-20c/a/peter-behrens-turbine-factory