The German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 word Schwabacher refers to a specific blackletter

Blackletter

Blackletter, also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 to well into the 17th century. It continued to be used for the German language until the 20th century. Fraktur is a notable script of this type, and sometimes...

 typeface

Typeface

In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....

. The term derives from the town of Schwabach

Schwabach

Schwabach is a German town of about 40,000 inhabitants near Nuremberg, in the center of the region of Franconia in the North of Bavaria. The city is an autonomous administrative district . Schwabach is also the name of a river which runs through the city prior joining the Rednitz.Schwabach is...

.

Characteristics

The small-letter g and the capital-letter H have particularly distinctive forms.

History

The Schwabacher was a blackletter typeface that evolved from textualis under the influence of Humanist type design in Italy. It was nearer to handwriting than the textualis style. In the 16th century, it was displaced by fraktur

Fraktur (typeface)

Fraktur is a calligraphic hand and any of several blackletter typefaces derived from this hand. The word derives from the past participle fractus of Latin frangere...

 as the most-used German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 typeface from about 1530. Thereafter it was in use as a secondary typeface in a similar way to italic. It was still used occasionally until the mid 20th century.
Fraktur was abandoned, although widely-used before, by the Nazis with the Normalschrifterlass of 3 January 1941, where it is called Schwabacher Judenlettern "Jew-letters of Schwabach":
There is however no evidence of any actual connection between Jews and the Schwabacher typeface.

Samples

(The German sentence in the figures reads: "Beispiel Alte Schwabacher [Example of old Schwabacher]: Victor jagt zwölf Boxkämpfer quer über den Sylter Deich". This is a nonsense sentence meaning "Victor chases twelve boxers across the great dam of Sylt", but contains all 26 letters of the alphabet plus the German umlauts

Umlaut (diacritic)

The diaeresis and the umlaut are diacritics that consist of two dots placed over a letter, most commonly a vowel. When that letter is an i or a j, the diacritic replaces the tittle: ï....

 and is thus an example of a pangram

Pangram

A pangram , or holoalphabetic sentence, is a sentence using every letter of the alphabet at least once. Pangrams have been used to display typefaces, test equipment, and develop skills in handwriting, calligraphy, and keyboarding...

.)

Further reading

• Friedrich Beck: „Schwabacher Judenlettern“ - Schriftverruf im Dritten Reich. in: Die Kunst des Vernetzens, Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, 2006, ISBN 3-86650-344-X (pdf)
• Philipp Luidl: Die Schwabacher – Die ungewöhnlichen Wege der Schwabacher Judenletter. Maro Verlag, Augsburg 2004. ISBN 3-87512-415-4
• "Vergessen und verdrängt" Schwabach 1918-1945, Ausstellungskatalog Stadtmuseum Schwabach, p. 172