Fraktur - Use

Use

Typesetting in Fraktur was still very common in the early 20th century in all German-speaking countries and areas, as well as in Norway, Estonia, and Latvia, and was still used to a very small extent in Sweden, Finland and Denmark, while other countries typeset in Antiqua in the early 20th century. Some books at that time used related blackletter fonts such as Schwabacher; however, the predominant typeface was the Normalfraktur (Fig. 1), which came in slight variations.

From the late 18th century to the late 19th century, fraktur was progressively replaced by antiqua as a symbol of the classicist age and emerging cosmopolitanism in most of the countries in Europe that had previously used fraktur. The debate surrounding this move was hotly discussed in Germany, where it was known as the Antiqua–Fraktur dispute. The shift affected mostly scientific writing in Germany, whereas most belletristic literature and newspapers continued to be printed in broken fonts. This radically changed when on January 3, 1941, Martin Bormann issued a circular to all public offices which declared Fraktur (and its corollary, the Sütterlin-based handwriting) to be Judenlettern (Jewish letters) and prohibited their further use. It has been speculated by German historian Albert Kapr that the régime had realized that Fraktur would inhibit communication in the territories occupied during World War II. Fraktur saw a short resurgence after the War, but quickly disappeared in a Germany keen on modernising its appearance.

Fraktur is today used mostly for decorative typesetting; for example, a number of traditional German newspapers such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine, as well as the Norwegian Aftenposten, still print their name in Fraktur on the masthead, and it is also popular for pub signs and the like. In this modern decorative use, the Fraktur rules about the use of long s and short s and of ligatures are often disregarded.

Individual Fraktur letters appear frequently in mathematics, which often denotes associated or parallel concepts by a single letter in various fonts. For example, a Lie group is often denoted by G, while its associated Lie algebra is . A ring ideal might be named while an element is .