Blog Assignment #7

For this blog post, I read the Wikipedia article, “Antiqua–Fraktur dispute.”   This article talks about the debate in Germany about what form of writing to teach and use.  “Antiqua” is a simpler Latin script, while “Fraktur” is more ornate and has a more Gothic look to it.  According to the article, Antiqua typefaces displaced Fraktur ones throughout Europe in the 15^th and 16^th centuries; however, the Fraktur typeface remained in use in Germany until the mid-20^th century.  For a while, each typeface was used for different things.  Fraktur was used for texts written in German, including German words in German-English dictionaries, while Antiqua was used for texts in other languages, such as Latin or English.  After the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in 1806, the German people started to try to define German culture by defining cultural values, collecting and recording German literature (such as Grimm’s Fairytales), and, yes, figuring out which script to write with.  Fraktur was seen as more “German,” while Antiqua was seen as “shallow,” “light,” and “not serious.”  Otto von Bismark, the first chancellor of Germany, favored Fraktur and would return gifts of texts printed in Antiqua typefaces.

In the 20^th century, the debate continued, with some of the arguments in favor of Fraktur being that it’s easier to read Germanic languages with, it’s “healthier for the eyes,” the popularity and usage of Latin scripts (like Antiqua) wouldn’t last, and that using Latin scripts would encourage the adoption of foreign words into the German language.  Unfortunately, the article doesn’t really go into the arguments in favor of Antiqua.  In 1911, the Reichstag (German parliament) voted on whether to make Antiqua the official typeface and stop teaching Kurrent (German cursive) in schools.  The motion was rejected with a narrow margin of only 3 votes. 

During the Nazi’s rule, Fraktur typefaces gained popularity, as they were promoted by the Nazis as being more German, while Antiqua typefaces were accused of being part of “Jewish influence.”  However, in 1941, Fraktur was banned and also accused of being Jewish.  One reason for the change might be that Antiqua was easier for the people in the areas that the Germans were conquering to read, as Fraktur hadn’t been used much outside of Germany in a few hundred years.  Another reason might be that Adolf Hitler simply didn’t like Fraktur and preferred Antiqua.  With this change came changes to which forms of writing were taught in schools.

After World War II, Sütterlin script was reintroduced to schools, but it didn’t last very long.  Fraktur scripts soon fell from use in Germany, and today, very few people are familiar with them.  This makes it difficult for all but the oldest Germans to read older documents and diaries.

The Antiqua-Fraktur dispute probably has its own Wikipedia page because it’s a relatively important part of German history.  Wikipedia seems to have pages on most historical events, so there’s no reason that it shouldn’t have a page on this one.

Information about the Antiqua-Fraktur dispute is available outside the Wikipedia article.  A quick Google search brings up 4,060 results, including a Reddit thread.  I would assume that it’s easier to find information about the dispute in German than it is to find it in English because it’s a part of German history.  Therefore, there are probably more German people researching and writing about the topic, and most, if not all, of those people are probably writing about it in German.

I definitely learned a lot from this article.  Prior to reading it, I was completely unfamiliar with German writing systems.  It’s easy to forget that not everyone who uses the Latin alphabet uses the same writing system.  However, I wish that the article had been more thorough and had gone more in-depth about of things, like whether Sütterlin and Kurrent scripts are Fraktur or Antiqua (I think they’re Fraktur, but neither this article nor the articles on either scripts explicitly said so) and why anybody wanted to switch to Antiqua typefaces in the first place.

I think that the information in this article is really useful and relevant to the current debate about whether to continue teaching cursive in American schools.  One of the biggest arguments in favor of teaching cursive is that, like in Germany, if we stop, future generations won’t be able to read past texts.  However, the arguments against teaching cursive don’t have much to do with culture, like the arguments in favor of Fraktur do.  Instead, they have to do with cursive writing losing its relevancy in the digital age and using the time to teach other subjects.  Still, we can learn a lot from Germany’s experiences with different writing systems.