History of German Kurrent

Kurrent is an old form of handwriting used for writing the German language.^[1] It is also called deutsche Schreibschrift or deutsche Schrift, "German script".^[2] Its German name, Kurrentschrift, comes from the Latin currere, "to run".^[3] Palaeographers place it among the broken scripts.^[4]

It developed in the early 16th century out of the Kanzleibastarda, the bastarda hand of the chanceries.^[5] From the 16th century on it established itself as the usual everyday script throughout the German-speaking area.^[6]

What sets it apart from the round "Latin" hand is its sharp angles, which earned it the name Spitzschrift, "pointed script".^[7] Even so, Kurrent has plenty of curves of its own.^[8]

In the 17th and 18th centuries its development was shaped above all by the Nuremberg and Saxon writing schools.^[9] In 1714 a decree in Prussia introduced a standard script in schools for the first time.^[10] Its pointed, right-slanting forms, which avoided curves as far as possible, caught on in other German territories as well.^[11] A school model hand thus shaped the development of Kurrent far beyond the borders of Prussia.^[12]

Kurrent was typically written at first with a quill.^[13] Later it was also written with a broad-edged pen, which made the thickness of the line change with the direction of the pen.^[14] In the 19th century the arrival of the metal pointed pen changed the script again.^[15] As a result the slant of the script grew steeper, up to 45 degrees.^[16] Written with the pointed pen, the lines swell and thin with the pressure of the hand.^[17]

In Austria in particular, Kurrent also became the script of offices and official records.^[18] In Switzerland it stayed in use for everyday, official and record-keeping writing until the early 20th century.^[19] Beyond the German-speaking area it also took hold in other non-Romance languages, such as Danish, Norwegian and Czech.^[20] In Denmark and Norway, where it was called Gotisk skrift, it was used with small changes until 1875.^[21]

Kurrent was used mainly for texts in the writer's own language.^[22] For certain jobs, such as headings, proper names, foreign languages and letters to foreigners, German writers used the Latin cursive alongside it.^[23] It was normal to switch between the two within a single sentence.^[24] A French term or a French place name, for instance, would be written in Latin cursive, surrounded by Kurrent.^[25]

From 1911, the graphic artist Ludwig Sütterlin began a revision and standardisation of Kurrent in Prussia.^[26] In 1911 he developed two model hands for school use, one German and one Latin.^[27] His German hand is a modern script based on Kurrent, with simplified letters and vertical strokes.^[28] It was designed for a pen that draws an even line width.^[29] It was pushed into German schools because it is graphically simpler to form than the Kurrent that had been usual until then.^[30] After that, the word Kurrent fell out of use in Germany.^[31] Between 1915 and the Nazi period it was gradually brought into German schools.^[32] Austria's schools, however, did not adopt it and went on writing traditional Kurrent.^[33]

Martin Bormann's decree of 3 January 1941 first ordered that books and periodicals be printed only in Antiqua instead of Fraktur.^[34] On 1 September 1941 the Reich education ministry's Normalschrift decree reorganised the teaching of handwriting in schools.^[35] The new deutsche Normalschrift was a form of Latin cursive that went back to Sütterlin's own Latin alphabet.^[36] From 1942 to 1945 it was the only hand German schools were allowed to use and teach.^[37]

After 1945, in some places into the 1970s and 1980s, West and East German schools still taught the German script alongside the Latin one, but it was hardly used in practice.^[38] From the middle of the 20th century, and above all after its abolition in schools in 1941, Kurrent, Sütterlin included, was used less and less.^[39]

Historians, scholars in other fields and family historians have to master Kurrent to read documents written in it.^[40] Expect a hand that slants to the right, with loops on its ascenders.^[41] The h and the z have loops in their lower curves.^[42] Over the script's long life, into the first part of the 20th century, many letters acquired variant forms, so the same letter can turn up in more than one shape.^[43]

The e has its own distinctive form that recalls an n.^[44] The two dots of the German umlaut historically come from this form of e.^[45] Because n and u otherwise look the same, a curved mark is drawn over the u to tell them apart.^[46] A straight bar over an n or an m is a reduplication stroke.^[47] It shows that the consonant is doubled.^[48]

Watch for changes of hand inside a document: headings, proper names and foreign-language words may switch into the rounder Latin cursive.^[49] Some hands you meet will be Sütterlin, which is easy to tell apart from other Kurrent hands by its even line width, its proportions of width and height, and its upright letters.^[50]