Fraktur

Fraktur is a special kind of writing style used for letters. It belongs to a group of old styles called blackletter, and it comes from a way of writing by hand called a calligraphic hand. What makes Fraktur special is that the starts and ends of the lines that make up each letter are very clear and often made bigger or darker. This looks quite different from the smooth, flowing letters we usually see today, which are called Antiqua or common typefaces.

The word "Fraktur" comes from a Latin word meaning “a break,” because the letters don’t flow together as much as in other styles. Even though many people sometimes use “Fraktur” to talk about any blackletter style, only some of them really have the special traits of Fraktur.

Fraktur was very popular in Germany and parts of Eastern Europe for a long time, even when other places moved on to different styles. In the 19th century, there was a big debate in Germany about whether to use Fraktur or the more modern Antiqua style. This argument went on until 1941, when the Nazi government banned Fraktur typefaces. Even though it is not used much today, Fraktur still has historical importance.

Characteristics

Fraktur is a special kind of writing that includes all 26 letters of the regular alphabet, plus a few extra characters. It usually has a special letter called the Eszett, shown as ⟨ß⟩, and vowels with small marks on top called umlauts. It also uses a longer version of the letter s, called the long s and shown as ⟨ſ⟩. Some Fraktur styles even have a special rounded version of the letter r, known as the r rotunda.

One special feature of Fraktur is that in the lowercase letter o, the left side of its curve is broken, but the right side is not. In old Danish books written with Fraktur, the letter ⟨ø⟩ was used instead of the German and Swedish ⟨ö⟩.

In Latvia, a version of Fraktur was used until the 1920s that included extra letters to show special sounds in the Latvian language. These included stroked letters and accents to show different sounds and longer vowels.

Origin

The first Fraktur typeface appeared in the early 1500s. Emperor Maximilian I asked artist Albrecht Dürer to design a special woodcut called the Triumphal Arch, and a new typeface was made for it by Hieronymus Andreae. Soon after, a publisher in Augsburg named Johann Schönsperger began using Fraktur for printing books.

Fraktur became very popular and was used across Germany and nearby areas like Scandinavia and Central Europe. Even though many places later switched to another style called Antiqua, German speakers kept using Fraktur for a long time.

Use

Fraktur was a popular style of printing in German-speaking countries and places like Norway, Estonia, and Latvia until the early 1900s. Some books used similar styles, but Fraktur, especially a version called Normalfraktur, was the most common.

Over time, from the late 1700s to the late 1800s, many European countries started using a different style called Antiqua instead. This change was debated, especially in Germany. While science writing mostly switched, books and newspapers often kept using Fraktur.

During a certain time in history, leaders in Germany used Fraktur in official documents and even on the cover of an important book. But later, they changed to international styles like Antiqua. After major events in the mid-1900s, Fraktur was no longer banned, but it is not used as much today.

Typeface samples

Below are some examples of Fraktur typefaces. The German sentence shown after the font names — “Victor jagt zwölf Boxkämpfer quer über den Sylter Deich” — means “Victor chases twelve boxers across the Sylt dike.” This sentence includes all 26 letters of the alphabet and special German letters, making it a good example to show how the typeface looks.

Fig. 1. Walbaum-Fraktur (1800)

Fig. 2. Humboldtfraktur (Hiero Rhode, 1938)

Unicode

Unicode does not have a special set of symbols just for Fraktur letters. Instead, Fraktur is seen as a special way to show the normal Latin alphabet. This means that extra shapes needed for Fraktur fonts are not part of Unicode; they are created by font designers.

However, there are some Fraktur-like symbols in special Unicode blocks used for math and symbols. These include letters like 𝔄, 𝔅, and 𝔞, but they are made for use in math and language studies, not for writing German text. The special letters like the long s, ß, and umlauted vowels are not included in these sets.

LaTeX

Modern LaTeX tools like XeTeX and LuaTeX can use a Fraktur font easily with the fontspec package.

Older versions of LaTeX, such as pdfTeX, use the \mathfrak{◌} command from packages like amssymb, amsfonts, or eufrak. This special command has its own way of creating Fraktur letters without using Unicode.

For example, writing \mathfrak{Fraktur} shows the word "Fraktur" in this special style. In math, you might see ideas like a and b written this way to talk about special rules in algebra.