Sunday, July 27, 2008

Short shrift?

Looks like a secret message in a Tintin book, but this 33-character script, Sütterlin, was taught in Germany until 1941. My mother learned it her first years in school, and then had to learn the new Latinate cursive. I thought it was ancient but it turns not to be that old at all. While loosely based on a bureaucratic cursive Fraktur, it was commissioned by the Prussian Ministry of Culture from graphic artist Ludwig Sütterlin in 1911 and was taught only from 1935 until 1941. Can you read the title above?