Learn to Read Old German Script

What is old German script?

“Old German script” is an umbrella term. It usually means one of three scripts used in German-speaking countries until 1941:

• Kurrent: German handwriting since the 16th century. Pointed, slanted and full of loops.
• Sütterlin: a simplified school version of Kurrent, designed by Ludwig Sütterlin and taught in Prussia from 1915. Upright and rounder.
• Fraktur: the blackletter print type of German books and newspapers. If you see “old German” in a printed book, it is almost always Fraktur.

So handwritten letters and postcards from before 1941 are in Kurrent or Sütterlin, and printed texts are in Fraktur. Latin letters, the ones we use today, were used alongside them for foreign words, names and sometimes whole texts.

Which script is in which record?

• Church registers: mostly Kurrent, often with Latin terms and names in Latin letters. Some older entries are entirely in Latin.
• Civil records: Germany-wide from 1876, in handwriting on printed forms. The form is in Fraktur, the entries are in Kurrent.
• Letters from relatives: Kurrent for those who went to school before about 1915, Sütterlin for those who went after.
• Newspapers, Bibles, gazetteers: Fraktur.

Why is it no longer used?

With the so-called Normalschrifterlass of January 3, 1941, the Nazi leadership ordered Fraktur and German handwriting to be replaced by Latin “normal script”. From then on, children learned only Latin letters at school. Anyone who started school before 1941 often kept writing Sütterlin or Kurrent for life, which is why so many family letters survive in these scripts, and why most Germans today cannot read them either.

How to learn to read old German script

1. Start with the lowercase letters. They make up most of any text. Learn e, n, r, s, h and u first.
2. Know the typical traps. The lowercase e looks like an n with two points, and the n looks like a u. That is why the u carries a small curve above it.
3. Watch the long s. The long ſ stands at the start of a word or syllable, the round s at the end: “ſchön”, but “Haus”.
4. Start with what you already know. Find your family name, the place and the dates first. They teach you that writer's hand before you try the rest.
5. Practice a few minutes a day. The reading trainer above quizzes letters, words and typical lines. After a couple of weeks, you will recognize most of the words in a simple record.