Kurrent

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Alphabet in kurrent script from about 1865. The next-to-last line shows the umlauts ä , ö , ü , and the corresponding capital letters Ae, Oe, and Ue; and the last line shows the ligatures ch, ck, th, sch, sz, and st.

Danish Kurrent script (»gotisk skrift«) from about 1800 with Æ and Ø at the end of the alphabet

Kurrent is an old form of German language handwriting based on late medieval cursive writing, also known as Kurrentschrift or Alte Deutsche Schrift ("Old German script"). Over the history of its use into the first part of the 20th century, many individual letters acquired variant forms.

Sütterlin is a modern script based on Kurrentschrift that is characterized by simplified letters and vertical strokes. It was developed in 1911 and taught in German schools as primary script until 1941.

[edit] Font examples

Letter from Lessing to Kleist, 14 March 1758
Manuscript by Wilhelm Busch (undated, late 19th century)
Example from a book published in 1905
Kurrent script used for text in a 1916 children's book
Signage on a municipal children's home in Esslingen am Neckar in 2006
Computer font version (text from What is Enlightenment? by Immanuel Kant)
Kurrent script from a 1903-1914 primer on German, the 26 letters, ligatures, start of sample text
Kurrent script from a 1903-1914 primer on German, the rest of the sample text