definition - Schwabacher
definition of Wikipedia
Typesetting old german: Fraktur, Schwabacher, Gotisch and initials. Blackletter typefaces are based on early manuscript lettering. They evolved in Western Europe from the mid twelfth century. Over time a wide variety of different blackletters appeared, but four.
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Schwabacher; Fraktur. De Fraktur kreeg zijn definitieve vorm rond 1520 en verdrong de Schwabacher. De Fraktur bleef eeuwenlang de meest gebruikte drukletter, maar werd in de meeste landen allengs vervangen door Antiqua-typen. Ehmcke-Schwabacher Initialen byTypographer Mediengestaltung. Leipzig Fraktur +4 byPeter Wiegel. Download Donate. Moderne Schwabacher +2 byPeter Wiegel. Download Donate. Schwabacher byTypographer Mediengestaltung. Schwaben Alt byPeter Wiegel. Download Donate. Schwabacher; Fraktur. De Fraktur kreeg zijn definitieve vorm rond 1520 en verdrong de Schwabacher. De Fraktur bleef eeuwenlang de meest gebruikte drukletter, maar werd in de meeste landen allengs vervangen door Antiqua-typen.
phrases
Abraham Schwabacher • Babette Schwabacher • Barbetta Schwabacher • Ethel Schwabacher • Gatzert-Schwabacher Land Company • Louis Schwabacher • Pacific Marine Schwabacher • Schwabacher Brothers • Schwabacher Brothers Hardware • Schwabacher Brothers Realty • Schwabacher Brothers and Co. • Schwabacher Brothers and Company • Schwabacher Dock • Schwabacher Hardware • Schwabacher Hardware Company • Schwabacher Realty • Schwabacher Realty Company • Schwabacher Wharf • Schwabacher's Wharf • Sigismund Schwabacher • Sigmund Schwabacher • Wolf Schwabacher
Wikipedia
For the pioneering merchant family in Washington Territory and State, see Schwabacher Brothers.
The German word Schwabacher (pronounced [ˈʃvaːˌbaxɐ]) refers to a specific blacklettertypeface. The term derives from the town of Schwabach.
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Characteristics
Schwabacher Fraktur Alphabet
The small-letter g and the capital-letter H have particularly distinctive forms.
History
The Schwabacher was a blackletter typeface that evolved from textualis under the influence of Humanist type design in Italy. It was nearer to handwriting than the textualis style. In the 16th century, it was displaced by fraktur as the most-used German typeface from about 1530. Thereafter it was in use as a secondary typeface in a similar way to italic.[1] It was still used occasionally until the mid 20th century.
Circular letter by Martin Bormann about the Normalschrifterlass.
Fraktur was abandoned, although widely-used before, by the Nazis with the Normalschrifterlass of 3 January 1941, where it is called Schwabacher Judenlettern 'Jew-letters of Schwabach':[2]
On behalf of the Führer I notify for common attention that:
Regarding and calling the so called gothic typeface as a German typeface is wrong. In fact, the gothic typeface consists of Jew-letters from Schwabach. Like they later gained control of the newspapers, the Jews living in Germany had seized control over the printing shops at introduction of the printing press, so that the Schwabacher Jew-letters were heavily introduced in Germany.
Today the Führer decided in a meeting with Reichsleiter Amann and book printing shop owner Adolf Müller, that the Antiqua typeface is to be called the normal typeface in future. Step by step all printing products have to be changed to this normal typeface. As soon as this is possible for school books, in schools only the normal typeface will be taught.
Authorities will refrain from using the Schwabacher Jew-letters in future; certificates of appointment, road signs and similar will only be produced in normal typeface in future. On behalf of the Führer, Mr. Amann will first change those papers and magazines to normal typeface, that are already spread abroad or are wanted to be.
Signed Martin Bormann
Regarding and calling the so called gothic typeface as a German typeface is wrong. In fact, the gothic typeface consists of Jew-letters from Schwabach. Like they later gained control of the newspapers, the Jews living in Germany had seized control over the printing shops at introduction of the printing press, so that the Schwabacher Jew-letters were heavily introduced in Germany.
Today the Führer decided in a meeting with Reichsleiter Amann and book printing shop owner Adolf Müller, that the Antiqua typeface is to be called the normal typeface in future. Step by step all printing products have to be changed to this normal typeface. As soon as this is possible for school books, in schools only the normal typeface will be taught.
Authorities will refrain from using the Schwabacher Jew-letters in future; certificates of appointment, road signs and similar will only be produced in normal typeface in future. On behalf of the Führer, Mr. Amann will first change those papers and magazines to normal typeface, that are already spread abroad or are wanted to be.
Signed Martin Bormann
There is however no evidence of any actual connection between Jews and the Schwabacher typeface.
Samples
(The German sentence in the figures reads: 'Beispiel Alte Schwabacher [Example of old Schwabacher]: Victor jagt zwölf Boxkämpfer quer über den Sylter Deich'. This is a nonsense sentence meaning 'Victor chases twelve boxers across the great dam of Sylt', but contains all 26 letters of the alphabet plus the German umlauts and is thus an example of a pangram.)
Notes and references
- ^Steinberg, S. H. (1961) Five Hundred Years of Printing; 2nd ed. Penguin Books; p. 41
- ^Burke, Christopher (1998), Paul Renner: the Art of Typography, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, pp. 165–167, ISBN978-1-56898-158-1, http://books.google.com/?id=zfT0Iam0q7AC&pg=PA165&vq=the+nazi+ban+on+gothic&dq=paul+renner+the+art+of+typography+1998
Further reading
- Friedrich Beck: „Schwabacher Judenlettern“ - Schriftverruf im Dritten Reich. in: Die Kunst des Vernetzens, Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, 2006, ISBN 3-86650-344-X (pdf)
- Philipp Luidl: Die Schwabacher – Die ungewöhnlichen Wege der Schwabacher Judenletter. Maro Verlag, Augsburg 2004. ISBN 3-87512-415-4
- 'Vergessen und verdrängt' Schwabach 1918-1945, Ausstellungskatalog Stadtmuseum Schwabach, p. 172
External links
- 'Die Alte Schwabacher Schrift'. Schwabach SPD. Archived from the original on March 18, 2009. http://web.archive.org/web/20090318005641/http://www.spd-schwabach.de/content/service/schrift/.(German)
Schwabacher Fraktur Download
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A Brief History of Fraktur
At the end of the 15th century most Latin books in Germany were printed in a dark, barely legible gothic type style known as Textura. What little was printed in German used the rougher and more base Schwabacher type.
When the German emperor Maximilian (reigned 1493-1517) decided to establish a splendid library of printed books, he directed that a new typeface be created especially for this purpose. This typeface was to be more elegant than the boorish Schwabacher, more modern than the gothic Textura and yet distinctly “German” in that it should not incorporate elements of the Antiqua style typefaces that the humanist movement had just created in Italy based on ancient roman lettering, and which had become the rage of printing fashion south of the Alps. Based on the Bastarda handwriting used by the scribes of the Emperor’s chancery, the calligrapher Leonhard Wagner designed this new typeface, which soon became known as Fraktur (say frac-toor) for the broken character of its lines. Only four of Maximilian’s 130 planned editions were completed in his lifetime, but those four had been sent for illustration to the foremost German renaissance artists, Dürer, Cranach and Grün. The artists used the new typeface in their works and thus gave it a wide distribution. Albrecht Dürer’s “Unterweysung” is still one of the most famous books printed in Fraktur.
When the German emperor Maximilian (reigned 1493-1517) decided to establish a splendid library of printed books, he directed that a new typeface be created especially for this purpose. This typeface was to be more elegant than the boorish Schwabacher, more modern than the gothic Textura and yet distinctly “German” in that it should not incorporate elements of the Antiqua style typefaces that the humanist movement had just created in Italy based on ancient roman lettering, and which had become the rage of printing fashion south of the Alps. Based on the Bastarda handwriting used by the scribes of the Emperor’s chancery, the calligrapher Leonhard Wagner designed this new typeface, which soon became known as Fraktur (say frac-toor) for the broken character of its lines. Only four of Maximilian’s 130 planned editions were completed in his lifetime, but those four had been sent for illustration to the foremost German renaissance artists, Dürer, Cranach and Grün. The artists used the new typeface in their works and thus gave it a wide distribution. Albrecht Dürer’s “Unterweysung” is still one of the most famous books printed in Fraktur.
When the reformation movement swept across Germany, a flood of printed propaganda came with it. Much of this material used the new Fraktur and helped to make the new type popular far and wide. It allowed for an easy distinction of catholic and protestant publications: The protestants printed German, using Fraktur, the Catholics printed Latin, using Antiqua types similar to the one used here. One edition of the Bible even had each verse start with a Fraktur letter when the topic was salvation or other positive events, but Antiqua when it was Satan, hell, and eternal damnation. It was this separation that caused Fraktur to be known as the “German” and Antiqua as the “Latin” font. For the next five centuries, the Germans managed to hold on to the ancient Fraktur, swaying between unanimous support of it and cursing the “outdated monkish scribbles” depending on the current level of national sentiment. Most works intended for a general audience continued to be printed this way well into the 20th century, while books of a more scientific nature used the “learned” Latin type.
In the meantime, most other European countries adopted Antiqua and still use it to this day. After World War I Fraktur finally began to go out of style as German society became more cosmopolitan and open to international influences. This ended with the rise of the Third Reich and the ensuing glorification of everything German. Many pseudo-Fraktur and Gothic types were created then, most displaying the harsh spirit of the “New Germany” and most of them incredibly ugly.
Ironically it was Hitler himself who finally terminated Fraktur printing. During the course of the war, the German type had proved to be a communications barrier with the peoples of occupied Europe, and so in January of 1941, Fraktur was officially abolished by declaring it to be “Un-German” and “of Jewish origin'. The order directed all newspapers and publishing houses to switch to Antiqua at the earliest practicable date. Due to the economic difficulties caused by the war, this date never really came, and relatively few publications had actually switched by the end of the war in 1945. The occupying allied forces naturally imposed a censorship on printed materials and further encouraged the use of Antiqua typefaces for reasons of legibility.
In the following years, German printers and type designers looked for new directions that were not reminiscent of Germany’s militarist past, and eventually developed a style similar to the Bauhaus designs of the 1920’s. During the next forty years, Fraktur became closely and solely associated with the Third Reich. All Fraktur printing was treated with suspicion.
Today, printers and type designers are carefully pulling these treasures back into the light and hope that they will once again be freed of political sentiments. We hope to contribute our share by making 18 of the most beautiful Fraktur and handwriting fonts available to you, and we invite you to enjoy this new, old, beautiful way of putting thoughts on paper.
Schwabacher Fraktur Font
Please take a moment to browse our collection of beautiful, authentic Fraktur fonts, The Gutenberg Press. It allows you to experience Fraktur for yourself, and to employ it in your own projects. The collection includes Fraktur fonts from five centuries, but all are relevant and perfectly usable today.