How To Understand German Handwriting and Gothic Scripts

Image courtesy of Penn State University Libraries Digital Collections 

Free Resources for Old German Handwriting and Fraktur

If you have German-speaking ancestors, chances are you have encountered old German handwriting (alternate names include Gothic, Kurrent, or Sütterlin) or Fraktur (blackletter) in your research—whether in records from German enclaves in the United States, such as Pennsylvania, or records in Central or Eastern Europe. A full page of script can look like proverbial chicken scratch and stymie research. With a little time and effort, however, you can learn to read Gothic script or Fraktur, whether you are fluent in German or not.

Economics, religion, and politics affected the evolution of German handwriting and typefaces. Early church records were usually written entirely by hand. Moving into the twentieth century, pre-printed religious and civil forms were produced in Fraktur with blank spaces for information about a specific individual. Clergy or civil registrars completing the forms often used a combination of Kurrent and Roman scripts. German-language newspapers throughout the world were printed with Fraktur typefaces into the early to mid-1900s. Decorative certificates and manuscripts employing handwritten Fraktur became known as frakturs. By the end of World War II, Kurrent script and Fraktur lost favor throughout the German-speaking world.

Nebraska Staats-Anzeiger (Lincoln, Nebraska), 17 Jan. 1901. Courtesy of Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers

Handwriting and even typefaces can vary by location, time, and scribe. We gathered tools to aid your mastery in interpreting these documents. Follow these three simple steps and you will be reading documents in old German in no time.

Step 1. Learn the Alphabet In German Handwriting

A full record that can feel overwhelming. Turn, first, to the building blocks of the written word: letters. Both the handwritten and typescript German alphabets have the familiar 26 letters used in English, plus additional vowels formed with umlauts (two dots) over them and Eszett (ß). However, there can be significant differences in how these letters look. Take, for example, the word Persönlichkeit, used often in civil registrations. What differences do you see between the handwritten and typed versions? Some differences you might note include the letters e, r, and k, or the combination of ch.

Step 2. Learn to Write Gothic Script

By learning to form first the letters and then shaping those letters into words and sentences, you gain a deeper understanding of the handwriting. Just as modern handwriting differs among individuals, handwriting of the past varies from scribe to scribe. Learning to write the old script begins with painstaking attempts to recreate each letter. As the shapes become more familiar, the precision of your letters wanes as you find the slight differences that are comfortable to your hand. It becomes easier to see where a scribe may have taken some liberties in joining one letter to the next. Pro Tip: Try using a fountain pen. For little investment, you can get fountains pens that convert between refillable ink cartridges and nibs that must be dipped into bottled ink.

Step 3. Learn Gothic and German Vocabulary

While you don’t need to be fluent in German to read a genealogical document, becoming familiar with specific vocabulary most frequently used in vital records will significantly ease your struggle with the handwriting. Anticipating certain terms aids your ability to recognize personal idiosyncrasies in handwriting that can become glaring clues in a manuscript. Additionally, noting easily confused letters in a known word can bring insight when transcribing unfamiliar words, or especially, names.

Free Gothic Script Resource Toolbox

These free resources are essential to building skills in reading old German documents.

Tutorials

• Script Tutorial: German from Brigham Young University has tips for reading foreign documents, sample alphabets, vocabulary lists, interactive exercises, and more.
• FamilySearch’s German Paleography Seminar taught by Charlotte Champenois has nine lessons beginning with the alphabet. Charlotte demonstrates how to write each letter and shares variants found in numerous documents.

Script Generators

• Schrift-Generator: Not sure how your family’s name looked in script or Fraktur? This tool developed by Michael Nülkenwill lets you enter text and view it in several script and Fraktur styles.
• The Old German Typewriter from Archivfürher will generate a list of possible words after you enter the first few characters. Hover over each word in the generated list to read the word in Roman.

Handwriting Samples and Exercises

• German-English primer: Learn the same way German-American children would have, with a downloadable primer available from the Max Kade Institute of German-American Studies. This page illuminating the letter P is an example from the primer.
• Deustche Schreibschrift , a book by Harald Süß, can be checked out from Internet Archive for one hour at a time. This book is written in German, but even if you don’t read German, you can benefit from the exercises. You can transcribe the handwritten documents and check your transcriptions against the key in the book.
• The Max Kade Institute for German American Studies has several examples of handwritten letters—some of which have transcripts available for you to check your work.

Vocabulary

• German Genealogical Word List from FamilySearch
• German Occupation Definitions from JewishGen
• Genealogical Vocabulary from Brigham Young University

Keyboard Hacks

• Pennsylvania State University has instructions for Windows, Mac, iPhone, and Android for typing characters in numerous European languages.
• Don’t want to mess with codes or alternate keyboards? Use typeit to create a character and paste it into your text.

Fonts

Use fonts for your computer to make flashcards or vocabulary lists.

• DaFont.com has a downloadable 18^th Century Kurrent or 1001 Fonts has Wiegel Kurrent.
• There are many free versions of Fraktur typeface, but one I like is Unifraktur Maguntia because it has several versions of the letter s, as well as multiple ligatures.

If you have not installed a font before, it’s not difficult. Check out these instructions for Windows and Mac.

Gothic Handwriting Worksheets

Did you know that German students were taught handwriting on sheets that differed from the ones used by American schoolchildren? Specifically, the center line is lower for German students. I made these handwriting sheets for my own practice, and I am happy to share them with you.

• A blank sheet for practicing any text of interest.
• A vocabulary page for creating your own dictionary

Name lists

• The Thought Co. blog has published an article on common German names. Although not restricted to historic names, numerous traditional names are found in the list.
• Knud Bielefeld, the creator of the website beliebte-Vornamen, developed lists of the most popular names in Germany from the 1890s to the present. The lists from 1890 through 2003 are created from sources such as family books, school lists, newspapers, and others. Though the sources don’t include every genealogist’s bread and butter—baptismal records—the list may still provide a clue to a hard-to-decipher given name.

Conclusion

Your ancestors can be discovered by learning to decode this unfamiliar script. By working through each step, you can begin to read historic German-language documents.

Not interested in tackling old German documents yourself? At Legacy Tree Genealogists, our team includes experts who are skilled at reading the scripts and tracing ancestors through multiple countries where German is or was spoken, including the United States, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, France, and more. Contact us today for a free quote.