Old GermanScripts and Typescripts:

A Cultural Unitfor Your Students

Sarah Glenn DeMaris

Valparaiso University

Old German Handwritten Scripts Your Students Have

Seen• Letters from a great-grandparent

• Family documents or diaries

• Entries in a family Bible

Old German TypescriptsYour Students Have Seen

• Old printed books with a “funny” font

• “Gothic” print in fantasy books or websites

• Ads for “renaissance fairs”

• On souvenir beer steins

• Wedding invitations

Why Today?

• To conduct research?

• To learn a “secret” language?

• To teach something different?

• To slip other learning into the lesson?

The Five C’s• Communication

• Culture

• Connections

• Comparisons

• Communities

Historical Background:

Carolingian Miniscule

From the “Gospels of Lothar”

Tours – about 850

Historical Background:

Blackletter

Dominican ManuscriptNürnberg, 1436Blackletter

Note:

• jointed angles

(typical Blackletter)

Also Note:

• use of abbreviations

• punctuation (lack of)

• punctuation (use of)

• two examples of “s”

Blackletter

Printed !

“Teuerdank”

1517 Nürnberg

Blackletter Styles “Peculiar to Germany”Fraktur (left) Schwabacher (right)

Deutsche Schreibschrift

• 1917 Sütterlin-Schrift in Prussian schools

• by 1935 in all German schools

• 1941 abolished

Deutsche Schreibschriftin the USA

Witter’sDeutsch-Englische

Schreib- und Lese-Fibelund

Neues Erstes LesebuchFür Amerikanische Freischulen

Now Let’s Practice!Reading:

• a medieval manuscript text

• a printed text in Fraktur

• a 19th-century German-American manuscript text

Writing: Your name!