german handwriting

German Print and Handwriting

From the 16th century until World War II, German was printed and written differently from other European languages. The term “Fraktur” was applied to printed German for the fact that its letters appeared “broken.” German handwriting, in which the letters were connected, was called “Kurrent” (“running”). While Fraktur remained largely unchanged over the centuries, a number of different norms for Kurrent (see image below) were developed.

Many older Germans today learned to write the “Sütterlin” Kurrent style developed by a graphic artist from Vienna, Ludwig Sütterlin (1865–1917).

In the early years of the Third Reich, the Nazis praised Fraktur and Kurrent as evocative of German uniqueness. However, as Germany began to conquer its neighbors, the Fraktur/Kurrent system was viewed as a hindrance to communication and replaced by the Latin alphabet.

Most Wisconsin Germans who learned to read and write German knew Fraktur and Kurrent well. When writing letters, some adopted the practice of “cross-writing” in order to save paper and postage.

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Old German Handwriting Posted by Constanze on Oct 10, 2018 in Language

When I was young there was an old German poster in my family kitchen that used to drive me insane, because although I knew it was in German, I couldn’t read what was written on it. It looked to me like another language! “It’s because that is old German handwriting”, my mum told me. “Some of the letters look very different.” Today I’d like to show you what old German handwriting looks like, should you ever be faced with the same, confusing situation!

A little history first!

Old German Handschrift (handwriting), known as die Kurrentschrift or Kurrent for short in German, but also known simply as die alte deutsche Schrift (‘Old German script’), was closely modelled on the handwriting used in das Mittelalter (medieval times).

An updated version of Kurrent called Sütterlin was developed in the early 20th Century, and was used and taught in German schools until the government changed it to deutsche Normalschrift (‘normal German script’). This updated handwriting resembled das lateinisches Alphabet (Latin alphabet) more closely, and is the German handwriting that is still used and taught today.

Significant differences between old and new German handwriting

A point of confusion with old German handwriting is that some of its letters don’t look like their modern counterparts. The characters for c, e, n, m, and u, for example, all look very similar, while the h looks more like an f. If you are interested in learning what the old letters look like, study this photo of Kurrentschrift to familiarise yourself with them:

Kurrentschrift:

By Deutsche_Kurrentschrift.jpg: AndreasPraefckederivative work: Martin Kozák (Deutsche_Kurrentschrift.jpg) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Sütterlin (the updated version of Kurrent, used in early 20th Century):

By Der Barbar [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Deutsche Normalschrift:

By Anhang zu RdErl. d. RMfWEV v. 1.9.1941 (Reichsministerium für Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Here is a card sent to me by my German aunt, so you can see what modern German handwriting looks like ‘in action’!

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About the Author: Constanze

Servus! I'm Constanze and I live in the UK. I'm half English and half German, and have been writing about German language and culture on this blog since 2014. I am also a fitness instructor & personal trainer.

John E Loth:

Very interesting. I am looking now for computer program to “translate” Fraktur into Roman Script. I can read Fraktur but I have some literary works which I would prefer to read in modern script. Hope you can provide a suggestion. Thanks for your post. BTY, I am fairly fluent in speaking and very fluent in reading German. Less good when it comes to writing but you are very fluent in both languages. Look forward to hearing back from you. regards John Loth

@John E Loth Hi John, there is a list of websites on here that might be of use to you! https://www.familytreemagazine.com/premium/7-websites-for-deciphering-old-german-script/

Tom Dawkes:

The older styles of German handwriting share many characteristics of the early English Secretary hand, and of course the long ‘s’ was current in English handwriting and printing until the early 19th century. You can download a Sütterlin font at http://www.suetterlinschrift.de/Englisch/Sutterlin.htm , and there are numerous tips and examples of how to approach this style.

Hallo Constanze,

Danke for posting this interesting subject on the old Deutsch handwriting. Wouldn’t it be nice if it was still being used today?

Hallo Constanze! Das mit der Handschrift ist mega interessant, ich habe noch Probleme um sie zu lesen…

Joseph T Madawela:

this is very interesting thank you!

Allan Mahnke:

I have seen letters from my grandparents’ families, written roughly 1890-1900, that are a curious blend of the older style and modern. They use forms from all three styles (sometimes 2 or 3 shapes for the same letter) in the same piece of correspondence. By roughly 1920, it seemed the earliest letter shapes had disappeared, at least within our family.

By the way, I recognize your chart from my own childhood. I saw it in a book and on someone’s wall. I learned the shapes, but never really became a fluent reader.

Sybille Schellack:

Thank you so much! I have been researching my roots through Ancestry and many of the documents are in that old handwriting. I really had a hard time with that. My mother used to tell me about the old handwriting (alphabet), but I didn’t know how to search for it. Vielen Dank!

einen Superblog betreibst Du hier. Vielen Dank dafür. Für Deine Leser (und auch deine deutsche Tante?) schicke ich Dir einen schönen Link: http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/zwiebelfisch/zwiebelfisch-abc-haeltst-haelst-a-314548.html . 🙂

Liebe Grüße Fred

Nice blog as always 🙂 Not to brag, but me can read and write Sütterlin, because me learnt it during my first profession 🙂 Its easier to read old writings then to understand it, because language changes over time as you know. Thanks.

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• Typography Journal

Kurrent—500 years of German handwriting

By Ralf Herrmann |  February 21, 2015 | Views: 116573

Just like blackletter, Kurrent is characterized by its abrupt changes of directions. In addition, the letters are almost always connected. Gaps are avoided and also writing over the same stroke again—whether it be on the paper itself or in the air. In cases, where this would happen in the Roman style of cursive writing, Kurrent just uses strokes beside each other.

Kurrent was also a style of the writing masters of the time and they embellished the type with decorative swashes for caps, ascenders and descenders. This gave the style it’s typical proportions with a rather small x-height. With these features fully developed over time, Kurrent became its own branch within the Latin script. The small x-height in connection with the zig-zag patterns and similar letter shapes made the type style more decorative than legible. 

When learning to write German, people would have to learn the Roman block letters and cursive, as well as blackletter and Kurrent, which were the most-used styles for written and printed German. Therefore their colloquial name became “Deutsche Schrift” (German Script). This semantic differentiation between “Latin script” and “German Script” was later misused to support the growing nationalistic ideology at the end of the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century. The so-called German script was glorified as unique and superior creation of the German people and used as nationalistic symbol. 

At the beginning of the 20th century the teaching of Kurrent was reformed. The proportions of Kurrent in connection with the influence of the steel pen were neither very legible nor a good foundation for a characteristic personal hand-writing style. The German graphic designer Ludwig Sütterlin developed a set of reformed alphabets for the ministry of culture of the state of Prussia. The Kurrent alphabet was introduced in 1915. In the 1930s it had become the dominant writing style for teaching to write German. Even though Ludwig Sütterlin had also created a Latin alphabet for schools, his name became a synonym for his the Kurrent style. 

Sütterlin did not try to invent new letters. Instead he modified the existing Kurrent style to make it easier to write and read. The general design of the letters remained basically unchanged. But the proportions were changed to a simple and more legible 1×1×1 ratio (ascender/x-height/descender). Beginners now wrote the letters upright and with a Redis pen without any pressure modulation while writing. 

The use of Sütterlin and blackletter typefaces was actively supported and even demanded, when the Nazis gained power in 1933. The publishers of school books had to use blackletter typefaces and had to focus on Kurrent writing—Jewish publishers on the other hand were not allowed to use any so-called “German typefaces”. So during the 1930s blackletter and Kurrent writing were on the rise again and the political connotations of this use became more and more prominent. 

Type foundries also reacted quickly to the ideological influence on the type use. Shortly after the Nazis gained power, a new style of modernized blackletter typefaces was offered from various foundries. It is now colloquially known as Schaftstiefelgrotesk (“combat boot sans serif”). This name also shows how strong the connotations between the type style and politics of the Nazi era still are. 

Offenbacher Script

The famous German calligrapher and type designer Rudolf Koch also got in the game and developed his own style of Kurrent writing: It was published in 1927 and was called Offenbacher Schrift . Koch wanted a script that was not only easy to write, but it should also allow for some artistic quality and freedom. The design was much more lively than Sütterlin’s Kurrent alphabet and was introduced in schools in the state of Hesse. But despite it’s good reputation in the field of typography and calligraphy, the writing style of Rudolf Koch wasn’t widely adopted.   

In 1941, after years of promoting the typical German type styles, things changed from one day to the next. The Nazis had realized, that they couldn’t easily force their type styles onto the people in the conquered territories. And the German metal typefaces had to be shipped throughout Europe just to print them, which was rather expensive. So the Nazis took a pragmatic approach: they invented a Jewish connection to the development of blackletter typefaces and with that banned all “German typefaces”. Now the Roman block letters and cursive were proposed as Normalschrift (“standard script”). After that, blackletter and Kurrent quickly fell out of use and were removed from the school curriculum. And with that, hundreds of years of handwritten German became illegible to the general public. 

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Member Flo… 36

Posted February 23, 2015 (edited)

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Thank you for bringing up the topic of Kurrent here, Ralf.

I understand this is not a scientific article, still I wish the captions were more detailed. For example, the samples in the third image (development) were written by Anna Simons, reproduced in Die zeitgemäße Schrift, June/July 1927. By the way, this evolutionary overview deliberately ignores the degeneration in the 19th century caused by the pointed (steel) pen. Koch’s motivation for his Kurrent was to bring back the “original, healthy and strong forms” of the broad-nib pen.

I don’t like the terms Roman block letters and Roman cursive . Former is simply Roman – nothing blocky about it. Latter isn’t Roman (i.e. upright, non-cursive). It could better be labelled Roundhand .

Why include Schaftstiefelgrotesk? The opportunistic nationalism of foundries in the early 1930s can also be illustrated with Kurrent typefaces directly. The first years of the Third Reich saw a whole batch of releases, including Deutsche Werbeschrift (1933), Deutsch-Signal (1934), or Balmung (1934; named after the legendary sword of Siegfried, the Germanic dragon-slaying hero of the Nibelungenlied).

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Posted February 24, 2015

  I don’t like the terms Roman block letters and Roman cursive . Former is simply Roman – nothing blocky about it.

While the term block letter is not so common in our field, it is an established term and makes sense in this chart. In fact, it is an important part of the message of that chart. 

Latter isn’t Roman (i.e. upright, non-cursive). It could better be labelled Roundhand .

Yes, it could be labelled Roundhand, but that is not what the chart is about. It’s supposed to show two types of letters in two separate branches, which in the German language traditionally are labelled Latin and German, but that makes things even more complicated as you know, because the “German typefaces” are just a sub group of the Latin script. So I use Roman as an umbrella term for the unbroken, connected and unconnected types of the “Lateinische Schrift”. I know that this is not universally accepted, but as long at is clear in the specific context, it’s the best compromise I can think of so far. There is a traditional connection between these styles over centuries and it can be useful to use one term to describe it. Extending Roman to include cursive in this way is as right or wrong as other umbrella terms such as German Script. It is the use and context which makes them correct/incorrect or useful/not useful.

The first years of the Third Reich saw a whole batch of releases, including Deutsche Werbeschrift (1933), Deutsch-Signal (1934), or Balmung (1934; named after the legendary sword of Siegfried, the Germanic dragon-slaying hero of the Nibelungenlied).

​I don’t have any original samples of such typefaces in my archive, but I will add them, should I get some in the future. They would fit in very well. Good idea!

Member Mol… 0

Posted January 29, 2017

I recently discovered Kurrent in several family letters that were kept by my great grandparents. I had no idea that they were in this type of penmanship until a friend was unable to translate them for me. Do you know of anyone who is able to translate documents written in Kurrent into English?

4 hours ago, MollyM said: Do you know of anyone who is able to translate documents written in Kurrent into English?

For a short text, you can just show a scan in our forums. 

There are of course also commercial transcriptions services (Kurrent → Roman script). Here is one example:  http://www.suetterlin-service.de/SUETTERLIN-SERVICE_Transkription_alter_Handschriften/English.html

Translating the text would then be a second step. 

Member che… 1

Posted January 20, 2021

This brought back memories - I attended a Bavarian elementary school from 1959 to 1962 and we still learned Kurrent as our first cursive alphabet. Today I can't read it anymore, so that was a wasted effort haha. My mother who is 96, can still read it, I suppose because she actually used it in her teenage years for her diary entries. If you ask very nicely and if the texts aren't too long, I think she would be glad to translate them for you or at least summarize the gist. :)

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Basic Handwriting Techniques

Techniques in deciphering german handwriting from old documents.

There are four questions to consider when analyzing old

German documents:

• What is the language of the document?
• Which alphabet(s) is/are used in the document?
• What is the general content?
• Who was the author?

The three principal languages of old German documents are German, Latin, and French. Most documents from the eighteenth century onward, including vital records, were written in German using the old Gothic handwriting. Many records produced by Catholic parishes were written in Latin, and many Catholic scribes used a type of handwriting that strongly resembles the handwriting taught in schools today. Many documents from areas close to French territories or areas that were occupied by the French military were written in French. These documents also used handwriting based on the Latin handwriting alphabet.

The Fraktur alphabet was frequently used in the titles and headers of old German documents. Much of the rest of the information was handwritten. It was customary for scribes to write family names in Latin script, and you may see this occasionally.

The content of the document can often be inferred from the author or authoring institution. Vital records, such as birth records, were not kept by the state until the early 1800s. Many local Catholic and Lutheran churches recorded births, christenings, marriages, and deaths. Emigration records were generally kept by the local government. Your main sources for genealogical records are church archives and state archives.

Document Extraction Guidelines

Extraction is the process of obtaining essential information from old documents. Essential information includes, but is not limited to, given name, surname, date of birth, place of birth, date of christening, date of marriage, place of marriage, name of spouse, date of emigration, the destination of emigration, and date and place of death. The challenge of extraction is finding the necessary information when it is embedded in extraneous details.

Many family history researchers are not interested in recognizing and understanding every word in every entry they encounter. Many read only for specific surnames, then stop to determine if the person in question was a member of the family, then read for details until they have what they need to continue. In general, column-entry pages can be read with greater speed than paragraph entries, but in column entries the surname of the principal is usually underlined or written in Latin handwriting, making the reading task much easier. Whatever the format of the record, each entry can be analyzed more efficiently by using the following tactics:

• Locate the principal person or persons (e.g., child and parents, bride and groom, deceased person).
• Determine the dates (whether expressed in numbers or words) of birth, christening, marriage, death and burial, recording date, and event date.
• Identify the verbs: geboren (born), getauft (christened), verheiratet (married), gestorben (died), and begraben (buried).
• Find the place names, such as home town, parish town, and county.
• Identify the occupations and/or status of important persons (e.g., farmer, butcher, widow, citizen, councilman, church elder).
• Determine the names of sponsors, pastors, and witnesses.
• Determine important adjectives: verstorben (deceased), ehelich/unehelich (legitimate/illegitimate), ledig (unmarried), ehemalig (former), etc.
• Locate other important numbers, such as time of day (morgens, nachmittags, or nachts), age of the principal, and address.
• Identify miscellaneous elements, such as stylistic terms, boilerplate, signatures, and comments by the scribe.

Depending upon the extent of detail sought, some researchers will be satisfied after identifying the types of information included in items 1-5 above. Each researcher will need to decide how much detail must be gleaned from a given record. It is not imperative to process the entire entry in every case. After all, some records include great amounts of extraneous information.

Having learned old German Script and having read through these guidelines, you are now ready to begin extracting. On the following page, you will find a sample document with much of the information specified above. This document is only one of the myriad types you will encounter in genealogical research.

Much of the text on this page was adapted (with permission) from p. 45 of Deciphering Handwriting in German Documents: Analyzing German, Latin, and French in Vital Records Written in Germany by Roger P. Minert (GRT Publications: Provo, Utah, USA, 2001). Please consult this resource for more detailed guidelines of document extraction.