Despite its widespread use, however, it would be several centuries before Antiqua finally emerged victorious in Germany - and even then, only with the “support” of a totalitarian regime. If a text changed languages, the fonts changed accordingly. However, the German-speaking world still used Blackletter for German texts and Antiqua for foreign texts into the 20th century. With both old styles combined, the new font was dubbed Antiqua.Īntiqua quickly became the standard for texts in Latin and Romance languages. This is why the humanists wrote in a similar minuscule (and also used Capitalis for upper-case letters). They deduced that the minuscule, as well as other simple Roman fonts such as Capitalis, dated back to antiquity. Renaissance scholars knew ancient texts only in the form of manuscripts written in Carolingian minuscule, a very clear and simple font. The name comes from the Latin antiquus (old) and referred to typefaces with rounded letters based off the Latin alphabet. Unfortunately for Fraktur enthusiasts, a new typeface arrived at the beginning of the 19th century to communicate new ideas: Antiqua. Apart from this, however, this font is quite easy to learn to read, even for beginners. Its descriptive name explains why “Fraktur” is often used colloquially to refer to all German Blackletter fonts - but you can tell the difference between Fraktur and the others by the so-called Elefantenrüssel, or “elephant’s trunk.” This cute expression describes the sweeping swings of the capital letters: the S-shaped decorative element that you can see in some capitals (A, B, J, M, N, P, R, T, V, W, Z). The name Fraktur comes from the Latin fractus, meaning “broken.” Like Textura and Schwabacher before it, Fraktur is a Blackletter typeface - or a gebrochene Schrift in German, which means “broken font.” This is a typeface where the bends of the letters are angular or “broken,” as abrupt changes in stroke direction make the letters look quite harsh. The first Fraktur typeface (based on an anonymously-made hand font) was designed in 1513 by Hans Schönsperger in Augsburg. This is because from the mid-16th century to the beginning of the 20th, it was the most-used typeface in the German-speaking world, and it’s still immediately recognizable to most German speakers. Whether you realize it or not, most “German-looking” fonts are actually Fraktur. Even when Fraktur took over, Schwabacher was still used occasionally, like for emphasis in Fraktur texts.

Schwabacher was the primary font choice in Germany from the late 15th century until the middle of the 16th. It probably comes from the 1528 Articles of Schwabach, one of Luther’s earliest confessions of faith.

The origins of the name “Schwabacher” are contested: There wasn’t a printing press in the Frankish village of Schwabach, nor was there a known type cutter with this name. Whereas the Latin Gutenberg Bibles had been set in Textura, many editions of the German Luther Bible used a font called Schwabacher instead. When Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, he did not merely help usher in new religious ideas he also helped usher in a new typeface. Its etymology is from the latin textura, meaning “fabric.” Calligraphic and latticed, this typeface is still considered the standard “medieval” font. This was the standard font from the 12th to 15th centuries in western Europe, and famous works, like the Gutenberg Bible, used this typeface. In The Beginning, There Was Texturaīefore we had the classic Times New Roman (and its older, fancier cousin Garamond), tried and true Arial, and unexplainably annoying Comic Sans, we had Textura. But why do these typefaces look so different from other fonts, and why are they so closely associated with Germany? To find out, we’ll embark on a journey that begins with the history of the printed word. You’ve probably seen the funny-looking German typefaces (like in the illustration above) many times before: from museums and historical movies, to cute antique signs and perhaps even on your great-grandmother’s birth certificate, they’re practically synonymous with traditional German culture.

History typeface