Sütterlin

The name Sütterlin is often used to refer to several similar varieties of old German handwriting, but Sütterlin's own script was taught only from 1915 to 1941 in all German schools.

• Name — Latin script (Sütterlin subvariant) • Type — Alphabet • Time — 1915–1970s • Languages — German • Fam1 — Latin script (Blackletter variant) • Fam2 — Latin script (Fraktur variant) • Fam3 — Latin (Kurrent subvariant) • Imagesize — 250px • Iso15924 — Latf

• Illustration — First exercises in Sütterlin in a school notebook (1953) The ministry had asked for "modern" handwriting scripts to be used in offices and to be taught in school. Sütterlin created two scripts in parallel with the two typefaces that were in use (see Antiqua–Fraktur dispute). The Sütterlin scripts were introduced in Prussia in 1915, and from the 1920s onwards, they began to replace the relatively similar old German handwriting (Kurrent) in schools. In 1935, the Sütterlin style officially became the only German script taught in schools. In 1941, the Nazi Party banned all "broken" (fraktur, blackletter) typefaces, including Sütterlin, and replaced them with Italian-style lettering, such as the Antiqua typeface class. From the academic year 1941/42 onwards, only the so-called Normalschrift ("normal script"), which had hitherto been taught alongside Sütterlin under the name of "Latin script", was allowed to be used and taught. However, many German speakers who had been brought up with that writing system continued to use it well into the postwar period. The reading of Sütterlin continued to be taught in some German schools until the 1970s.

Sütterlin is based on older German handwriting, which is a handwriting form of the Blackletter scripts such as Fraktur and Schwabacher, the German print scripts used at the same time. It includes the long s (ſ) as well as several standard ligatures such as (f-f), (ſ-t), (s-t), and ß (ſ-z or ſ-s). Because of their distinctiveness, Sütterlin letters can be used on the blackboard for certain mathematical symbols that are represented by Fraktur letters in print. The lower-case d in Kurrent and Sütterlin is used in proofreading for deleatur ("let it be deleted"). The Sütterlin lower-case 'e' contains two vertical bars close together, in which the origin of the umlaut diacritic (¨) from a small 'e' written above the modified vowel can be seen.

(There are two lower-case forms of the letter "s". The second one is used at the end of a syllable.) • Illustration — 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A a B b C c D d E e F f G g H h I i J j K k L l M m N n O o P p Q q R r S ſ s ß T t U u V v W w X x Y y Z z Ä ä Ö ö Ü ü