Replicating German handwriting between 1880-1910

oprion27 February 2008 · 09:47

I am trying to replicate what a hastily scribbled note on the back of the business card would look like, if it were written some time between 1880 and 1910 by a well-educated German. It isn’t meant to be legible, but needs to look fairly authentic.

Now, my knowledge of German is limited to the prase “Hände Hoch”, and what little reaserch I managed, is based on conjecture and automatic translations. Anyway, from what I could find, it seems that I need to use a version of the script that came before the spread of Sütterlin which became popular after 1915. I’ve compiled a short sampling of handwritten notes from before that period, and tried to combine them with some letters from the Kurrent Kupferstich font to get enough variation in repeating glyphs.

Here’s what I got. Am I completely off the mark?

The German text is supposed to read:
Wo: Der Narrenturm, Operationssaal
Wann: 12. Januar, 9:30 Uhr
Ohne Fleiß kein Preis.

Florian Hardwig27 February 2008 · 10:33

Hi Ivan,

yeah, basically you’re right: This is ‘Kurrentschrift’, the ‘broken’ script that was used in Germany until it got banned, together with Fraktur and the other ‘broken’ typefaces, in the 1940s. [See here: Wikipedia on Deutsche Kurrentschrift]. It still can be seen now and then in old people’s handwriting.

And yes, Sütterlin is a reformed version of it; upright, with a larger x-height.

Some remarks: The ‘N’ in Narrenturm looks like ‘St’.
And: you left out the word Operation