Deutsche Kurrentschrift

[Gobblecup]

Hopefully this is not a topic that has been discussed before, but as I am new to FPN I haven't really seen older discussions.

 

I would like to learn to write in Deutsche Kurrentschrift, a pre WWI German cursive style of writing. My interest in it came about when my family was going through older letters, scribblings, etc. all written in an unreadable cursive font (also written in German). After joining the FPN and learning about different styles of calligraphy and handwriting, I thought more about the old german cursive my great grandmother and her parents, grandparents, etc wrote in. I don't think I could simply buy a book on learning and practicing Kurrentschrift, which would be ideal, but I have found a web page or two with some examples of the font. I opened this discussion mainly to see if any fellow FPN users have any advice or resources on learning this particular cursive script, but also feel free to discuss or share any info you might have related to Kurrentschrift, I won't bother me!

 

Here is a sample of my families old papers in Kurrentschrift, I can see its a song, but until I can learn to read the cursive better I am nowhere near a full translation: http://i1001.photobucket.com/albums/af135/jtm117/Marburger_Kurrentschrift_music_lyrics.jpg

 

Happy postings!

[ajk13a]

Brigham Young University has a free online tutorial for "German Script" at http://script.byu.edu/german/en/welcome.aspx. It is very helpful to me in genealogical research.

 

Good Luck.

[anderl]

I can see its a song.

More precisely, it's a drinking song (or "pub song") of some students' fraternity -- the gist being that everything (weather conditions, areas of study) is forgotten once they're on their way to the pub on a Saturday evening. (The text is written very diligently, and I'd guess it's from one of those notebooks they used to keep for friends to enter a poem or other nicety to remember them by.)

 

I "had" to learn reading deutsche Kurrent when a colleague asked me to translate a letter by a famous mathematician (Kronecker) on modular forms. Wasn't easy, but I got by courtesy of some patience and the internet; see e.g. wikipedia -- the de.wiki page gives more details than the en.wiwi version, but the alphabet's on the English version, too -- or this alphabet or this page which also contains some writing exercises, for both Kurrent and Suetterlin.

 

The longer I read Kurrent, the more tempted I was trying to write like this, but I never got round to it so far. I'd be interested to hear how you're getting along.

[atypical]

I think it starts with

 

"Kneiplied"

Ob der Donner brauset, ob die Sonne glüht

etc...

 

Looks like it would take some getting used to, but not that difficult.

 

Several books seem to be available on how to read and write Kurrentschrift.

Searching for Kurrentschrift on www.amazon.de yields a few.

 

Good luck with your efforts.

[Gobblecup]

Thanks for the responses! I will do a little more research on the links provided and check back in to let you all know how I'm progressing. Thanks again!

 

P.S. this must have been my great great grandfather "Marburger"'s... he was reputed to be a drinker and gambler in his day!

Edited November 2, 2010 by Gobblecup

[Damayanti]

Thanks for the responses! I will do a little more research on the links provided and check back in to let you all know how I'm progressing. Thanks again!

 

P.S. this must have been my great great grandfather "Marburger"'s... he was reputed to be a drinker and gambler in his day!

 

Look at Harald Süß: Deutsche Schreibschrift. Lesen und Schreiben lernen.

I find it quite a useful book with an overview and nice examples of Offenbacher Schrift, Kurrent and Sütterlin. There's also a practicing part added.

Edited November 2, 2010 by Damayanti

[Chevalier]

I guess you don't understand German, that's too bad, because we have a pretty nice forum for Kurrent and Fraktur in German.

 

Kurrent isn't hard, as long as you already know how to write. You just need to learn the different forms (and they are much easier and prettier out of the box anyway). There are some differences regarding s-rules (short-s, long-s and ß) and ligatures that are obligatory (and others that are not, but can be used), but I'd translate the needed stuff, in case you won't find it anywhere else.

 

Here is some information about the s-rules for now.

[slqqqq]

I like this script too, but I did not get any information on the rules of it.

[Chevalier]

I'll translate everything necessary to write Kurrent. We'll visit the grandma of my wife this week, that means a lot of free time, that I have to fill with something useful.

[Daisy]

I'll translate everything necessary to write Kurrent. We'll visit the grandma of my wife this week, that means a lot of free time, that I have to fill with something useful.

 

 

I have no intention of writing Fraktur, but I'd sure be interested in reading the guidelines of its construction, as I consider it a newer generation blackletter and there must be many similarities. Thanks -- I'm looking forward to it!

[FooWriter]

I've always liked the look of kurrentschrift because it seems so graceful to me - unlike Sütterlin, which always looked, to me, like a child's first attempts at drawing cursive letters.

 

I don't know that I'd ever bother trying to learn kurrent in full, since so few are able to read it (except those genealogists who have had the issue forced on us), but I'm not above borrowing a few of the interesting letter forms that are not so alien as to be unrecognizable to the average cursive-schooled reader.

 

Edited: I keep forgetting I can't use HTML entities here.

Edited November 20, 2010 by FooWriter

[halfjapanese]

I would like to learn to write in Deutsche Kurrentschrift, a pre WWI German cursive style of writing.

 

 

Hi Gobblecup, I know this thread is a bit old (4 years), but I wanted to reply as I am currently teaching myself how to write in Kurrent. My favorite website so far is the one from Margaret Mücke. She's a school teacher from the 1940s who picked up Kurrent in retirement and has been giving classes in Kurrent at the adult vocational school since 2010. If you click on the menu link Schreiblehrgang, which literally means "handwriting seminar", then you'll land on a page with a couple of very helpful PDFs, which you can download for free. The 30-page PDF with very detailed instructions on how to write each letter can be found under the link Schreiblehrgang Kurrentschrift, which she published in 2014. On this same page, she also has ruled practice sheets which maintain an ascender : body : descender ratio of 2:1:2, which was common in forms of Kurrent found around 1900. The guidelines can be downloaded as PDFs under the links Linienblatt 1 (for larger handwriting) and Linienblatt 2 (for smaller handwriting).

 

Since I am a newly registered user, I don't seem to have the administrative rights to upload pictures, otherwise I'd show you how far I've gotten. I've been practicing daily since December 23, 2014 and have made it about half-way through the lowercase alphabet.

 

Are you still around? Did you manage to learn Kurrent in the last four years?

 

EDIT: I eventually noticed the "attach files" button.

Edited February 20, 2015 by halfjapanese

[ac12]

@hj

That guidesheet is interesting, as it allows the ascender and descenders to really stand out.

My descenders usually go beyond a minus x-height distance below the base line.

[mirosc]

 

My favorite website so far is the one from Margaret Mücke.

 

That is a really fantastic resource. I didn't know it before. Thank you so very much for sharing it!

[ac12]

Thanks for the info on the guideline spacing. I like the 2-1-2 spacing better than the standard 1-1-1 spacing.

In my own handwriting, the descenders are almost following the 2-1-2 spacing.