The broken script that once defined German identity
Unlike the smooth, continuous curves of modern fonts, Fraktur is built on visible breaks. This distinctive, fractured style became a central battleground in a century-long typographic war, eventually becoming a political tool used to label even the very script it championed as foreign.
The name Fraktur derives from the Latin 'frāctūra', meaning a break. This reflects its fundamental design: unlike Antiqua typefaces, where strokes flow together, Fraktur emphasizes the individual, broken beginnings and ends of each letter stroke. This aesthetic was famously applied to the lowercase 'o', where the left side of the bow is broken while the right remains intact.
Emerging in the early 16th century, the first Fraktur typeface was commissioned by Emperor Maximilian I and designed by Hieronymus Andreae for a woodcut by Albrecht Dürer. The style was quickly established for printing by the Augsburg publisher Johann Schönsperger through works like the 1513 'Gebetbuch'. Over centuries, it became the dominant script across much of Central and Eastern Europe, including parts of Scandinavia and the Baltics.
However, the script became the center of the 'Antiqua–Fraktur dispute'. From the late 18th century, as Europe embraced cosmopolitanism, many nations transitioned to Antiqua. Germany remained a notable holdout, but the tension escalated into a heated debate over national identity. By the 1930s, the Nazi regime utilized various blackletter styles, including the 'Gebrochene Grotesk' typefaces like Tannenberg, for official use.
In a sudden political pivot on January 3, 1941, the Nazi Party ended the dispute by banning Fraktur. Martin Bormann issued a decree labeling the script 'Judenlettern' (Jewish letters), forcing a switch to international Antiqua. Historians like Albert Kapr suggest this move was likely intended to improve communication within occupied territories during the war. While the ban was lifted after 1945, Fraktur remains in limited use today.
Source: Fraktur
