LL-L: "Scripts" LOWLANDS-L, 16.MAY.2000 (01) [E/German]

Tue May 16 16:07:59 UTC 2000

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 16.MAY.2000 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Ian J. L. Adkins [ian at cyberhub.co.uk]
Subject: LL-L: "Orthography" LOWLANDS-L, 15.MAY.2000 (01) [E/German]

Ron wrote:

        << Later this was discontinued in many schools with the result that most
younger people cannot read old books. >>

        It's amazing though the trouble that some of the students in my class had
with Fraktur.  Since I was going to school for graphic design I studied
typography as a matter of course, so I didn't have much trouble adapting to
the letterforms at all, no more than one does reading any other blackletter
typeface.  About as easy as getting used to the filial s and some archaic
ligatures in English-language Caslon type from the seventeeth and
eighteenth centuries.  But some people really struggled.  I think, as Ron
later said, some of it is due to "laziness and unwillingness," but a great
part of it is simply a lack of understanding about the evolution of the
letter form.  That's the domain of the arts and humanities, which modern
education now neglects as being irrelevent (i.e., won't land you a job with
a major firm and a $50K salary).

        Und Profesor Storme: Ich besitze ein Buch, das 1879 im Fraktur gedruckt
wird, der das am schönsten gedruckte Buch I zu besitzen ist.  Es ist
unglücklich, daß Fraktur nicht mehr verwendet wird.  Haben Sie irgendeine
Hoffnung, daß Fraktur zum Gebrauch zurückgeht?

--Ian

---
Ian J. L. Adkins
Creative Director, Blackmill Networks Ltd.
ian at mail.cyberhub.co.uk
http://www.blackmill.net

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From: john feather [johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk]
Subject: Orthography

Jacob Grimm was not so keen on the alleged benefits of Fraktur as the author
Matthias Storme quoted. He wrote (among other things):

`Es verstand sich fast von selbst, dasz die ungestalte und häszliche
schrift, die noch immer unsere meisten bücher gegenüber denen aller übrigen
gebildeten völker von auszen barbarisch erscheinen läszt .. beseitigt
bleiben muste.'

Regarding Ron's points, it seems that the use of Fraktur may have gone in
and out of fashion like the use of foreign words. According to Astrid
Stedje:

`In der Zeit um den 1. Weltkrieg wurde die Sprachpflege stärker in den
Dienst des Nationalismus gestellt and der Fremdwortgebrauch als "geistiger
Landesverrat" bezeichnet. Nach einer Gegenreaktion verstärkte sich der
Purismus wieder in den ersten Jahren der nationalsozialistischen Zeit, wurde
aber durch einen sog. Führererlaß eingedämmt.'

She doesn't give a date for the decree but I vaguely remember that it was in
the1940s: it seemed an odd thing to be concerned about at that time.

A quick look at  my old stamp collection shows Roman script in use for the
main issues from 1889 to 1920 but Fraktur for the Hindenburg (1933-36) and
air-mail (1934) issues. Hitler (1941-2) was in Roman. An issue in 1947-48 is
in Fraktur ("Deutsche Post") and Roman ("Mark").

A  couple of years ago I was involved in a production of Christopher Fry's
"The Dark is Light Enough". The set designer copied an engraving entitled
"Wien 1848" for the backcloth but got the writing  produced on a computer so
that it could be traced. (A bit of Verfremdungseffekt going on here!)
Unfortunately the computer buff produced it in English black-letter rather
than Fraktur. A German friend who saw the play found this unreadable and had
to have it explained to her.

John Feather johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk

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From: gdeutsch at estec.esa.nl
Subject: LL-L: "Scripts" (was "Orthography") LOWLANDS-L, 15.MAY.2000(03) [E]

Ludger Kaczmarek wrote:
>A minor addition to Ron's posting:
>The Nazi government opposed to writing "Fraktur". In a
>"Rundschreiben des Stabsleiters des Stellvertreters des Führers"
>of 3.1.1941 Martin Bormann decreed that "Normalschrift" (=Antiqua)
> had to be used instead of "gotische Schrift" (=Fraktur).

There are weird aspects about the status of "Fraktur" and the quoted circular
directive.

This directive is written on a paper where the letterhead is in Fraktur; the
text does not only
announce the official change to Antiqua but suggests that Fraktur is
something evil and "un-German".
The fact that this all written under the Fraktur head brings the matter close
to the
paradox of the Cretan stating that all Cretans are lying.

Actually all official and most not official texts were edited in Antiqua soon
after the circular. Private handwriting
then were partly already done since some decenia before in "Latin" and not in
"Kurrent"

The other weird aspect is, in my opinion, that today Americans and others use
Fraktur to create
associations with Nazi-Germany, whilst the Nazi-regime itself had condemned
the usage of the
Frakture and did introduce the international standard.

BTW, I don't know what happened in Germany, but as far I know in Austria
after W.W.II the writing and reading of
"Kurrentschrift" (written version of Fraktur) was never taught on a
structural basis at school.
I too went to primary school after WWII and from my hundreds of colleges and
friends of about my age I know, virtually nobody is able to write or read
properly "Kurrent".
How difficult (or not) it is to read such texts if you are not trained, one
can asses e.g. with the examples given
at http://www.transkription.de/seiten/beispiele.htm.(There I can read easily
the text from Hamburg written 1941 but can decoipher only with difficulties
Goethe's text.)

Another BTW which allows me to mention at least something with relation to
LL:
 the 'difficult' grapheme for S being so similar to the grapheme f (Ron
mentioned) is only maintained
much longer in the "German" Fraktur.
In older texts in English and Dutch (and Latin etc.) in Antiqua of the 16th
Century the
(almost) f-shaped S (e.g. in position before T) did exist also.
I don't know if Low Saxon texts from that time used it as well if they were
written in Antiqua - which raises the issue, have Low Saxon texts in the
16th-20th century mainly been written in the "Dutch" Antiqua or the "German"
Fraktura. Ron, would you know?

Anyhow, I don't know when this usage stopped and whether it stopped in the
same period for the different languages.

regards
Georg Deutsch

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From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Scripts

Georg wrote above:

> This directive is written on a paper where the letterhead is in Fraktur; > the
> text does not only
> announce the official change to Antiqua but suggests that Fraktur is
> something evil and "un-German".
> The fact that this all written under the Fraktur head brings the matter
> close to the
> paradox of the Cretan stating that all Cretans are lying.

By now we all should realize that it is senseless to search for sense in
anything that crowd thought and did, that at the time officially endorsed
"science" had a huge "PSEUDO" in front of it, and that everything Hitler
personally disliked somehow ended up being linked to some Jewish conspiracy
thanks to that self-serving brand of "science."  I've seen plenty of official
German documents from the 1940s in which at least the letterheads were, though
perhaps not in Fraktur in the strictest sense, in a "Gothic"-based type akin
to Fraktur, and handwritten parts were in the Fraktur-linked "current"
(Sütterlin) scripts.  I draw your attention to a small selection:

(1935) http://www.therupturedduck.com/WebPages/Documents/d206full.htm
(1938) http://www.militaria-madness.com.au/P1004.html
(1939) http://www.militaria-madness.com.au/P1003.html
(1939) http://www.therupturedduck.com/WebPages/Documents/d205army.htm
(1940) http://www.therupturedduck.com/WebPages/Documents/d201navy.htm
(1940) http://www.therupturedduck.com/WebPages/Documents/d216sa.htm
(1936-1943) http://www.therupturedduck.com/WebPages/Documents/d223.htm

> I don't know if Low Saxon texts from that time used it as well if they > were
> written in Antiqua - which raises the issue, have Low Saxon texts in the
> 16th-20th century mainly been written in the "Dutch" Antiqua or the > "German"
> Fraktura. Ron, would you know?

Thanks for bringing us home.  I am not sure, Georg, but a cursory look through
collections seems to be pointing to a mixture.  It's perhaps safe to
generalize by saying that since German domination (after the demise of the
Hanseatic League) the use of German type, including Fraktur, for Low Saxon
(Low German) in Germany pretty much equals that of German.  (Remember that
Fraktur was at some time or other also used for other languages in Germany and
German-dominated areas, such as Sorbian, Frisian, and the Baltic languages.  I
have also seen Fraktur type used for Danish, besides the fact that until the
early 20th century Danish also capitalized nouns like in German.)

I have seen several recently published Low Saxon texts in which the headings
were in Fraktur, such as in Low Saxon columns in newspapers in which Fraktur
is not used otherwise.  Personally I feel that these are attempts to make
these texts apear visually "archaic" because they are in an assumedly
"archaic" language, the language most people associate with older folks, the
language many consider a thing of the past.

Best regards,

Reinhard/Ron

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