Kurrent

The German cursive (Latin currere " run ") is a marquee; it was about since the beginning of the modern era to the middle of the 20th century, the general traffic heading in the entire German -speaking world. Typographic it belongs to the broken scripts. Colloquially all German script fonts are in Germany often mistakenly referred to as Sütterlinschrift.

The German cursive differs by acute angles ( " Spitz font " ) from the round, " Latin" font. With minor modifications, it was also in Scandinavia - in Denmark and Norway as " Gotisk skrift " means - to 1875 used.

History

The German cursive has long been the usual traffic heading in the entire German -speaking world. In Austria, Kurrent established as the official and protocol writing. Until 1952, there was the " Theses Kurrent, beautiful handwriting with feather" to learn in parallel. The crucial change in the Kurrent was introduced in Prussia by the graphic artist Ludwig Sütterlin. He developed 1911 a very similar, but separate font. This change moved into Germany's schools, but in Austria Kurrent could survive for a long time. The German handwriting of Sütterlin was very promoted in Germany, because it is technically much easier to write than the previously common variant of German cursive hand, and soon the term Kurrent arrived in Germany disuse. 1941, by the normal type adoption means that both German writings in favor of a unified Latin script, the " normal German magazine", were abolished in the Greater German Reich.

By Martin Bormann decree of January 3, 1941, only the broken pamphlets were initially banned. With a second circular dated 1 September 1941, the use of German script fonts was prohibited. This means that the hitherto customary German cursive and only introduced in the 1920s, German Sütterlinschrift was forbidden. Since the beginning of the school year 1941/42, was to be only the so-called " German Normal font " used and taught in German schools, which also goes back to a design by Ludwig Sütterlin, whereas previously the " Latin " was also informed to Sütterlinschrift.

In Switzerland, the German cursive was used during the 19th century as transport, administrative and protocol writing.

Until the late 20th century the cursive lowercase letters were used to denote vectors and complex numbers and uppercase letters this document to denote matrices or tensors of second level in mathematics often.

Styles of writing

Autograph by Wilhelm Busch ( undated, about the end of 19th century)

Postcard Greetings from Bielsko ( boy in front of blackboard, 1905)

Urban children's home in Esslingen am Neckar (recording 2006)

Journal of a boundary protocol, late 19th century, near Buchholz ( Nordheide)

Final sentence of a comparison from 1750; contains both Kurrent and Latin script