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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, Alte Deutsche Schrift ("old German script") and German cursive. Over the history of its use into the first part of the 20th century, many individual letters acquired variant forms.

German writers used both cursive styles, Kurrent and English cursive, in parallel: location, contents and context of the text determined which script style to use.

Sütterlin is a modern script based on Kurrent that is characterized by simplified letters and vertical strokes. It was developed in 1911 and taught in German schools as primary script from 1935 until the beginning of January, 1941. Then it was replaced with "normal German handwriting", which is sometimes referred to (correctly but confusingly) as "Latin writing". See Ausgangsschrift for examples of post-1941 school handwriting samples.

Lettering examples

See also