Kurrent

Short description: Form of German-language handwriting

Alphabet in Kurrent script from about 1865. The next-to-last line shows the umlauts ä, ö, ü, and the corresponding capital letters Ae, Oe, and Ue; and the last line shows the ligatures ch, ck, th, sch, sz (ß), and st.

Danish Kurrent script (»gotisk skrift«) from about 1800 with Æ and Ø at the end of the alphabet

Sample font table of German handwriting by Kaushik Carlini, 2021

Kurrent (German: [kʊˈʁɛnt]) is an old form of German-language handwriting based on late medieval cursive writing, also known as Kurrentschrift ("cursive script"), deutsche Schrift ("German script"), and German cursive. Over the history of its use into the first part of the 20th century, many individual letters acquired variant forms.

German writers used both cursive styles, Kurrent and Latin cursive, in parallel: Location, contents, and context of the text determined which script style to use.

Sütterlin is a modern script based on Kurrent that is characterized by simplified letters and vertical strokes. It was developed in 1911 and taught in all German schools as the primary script from 1915 until the beginning of January 1941. Then it was replaced with deutsche Normalschrift ("normal German handwriting"), which is sometimes referred to as "Latin writing".

Lettering examples

Letter from Lessing to Kleist, 14 March 1758
Manuscript by Wilhelm Busch (undated, late 19th century)
Example from a book published in 1905
Kurrent script used for text in a 1916 children's book
Signage on a municipal children's home (Städtisches Kinderheim) in Esslingen am Neckar in 2006
A handwritten restaurant order in Kurrent from the 1920s
Kurrent script from a 1903–14 primer on German, the 26 letters, ligatures, start of sample text
Kurrent script from a 1903–14 primer on German, the rest of the sample text
Final paragraph of a German contract from 1750 signed by George II, King of Great Britain and Elector of Hanover. It contains a mixture of Kurrent and 'Latin font' scripts.
Handwritten letter, 1792