Schwabacher

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The German word Schwabacher (pronounced [ˈʃvaːˌbaxər]) refers to a specific blackletter typeface. The term derives from the village of Schwabach.

[edit] Characteristics

overview on some blackletter typefaces

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

[edit] 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 as the most-used German typeface.^{[citation needed]} It was still used occasionally until the mid 20th century.

Fraktur was abandoned, although widely-used before, by the Nazis with the Schrifterlass of 3 January 1941, where it is called Schwabacher Judenlettern "Jew-letters of Schwabach".^[1] There is however no evidence of any actual connection between Jews and the Schwabacher typeface.

[edit] Samples

Schwabacher

(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 box fighters across the dike of Sylt", but contains all 26 letters of the alphabet plus the German umlauts and is thus an example of a pangram.)

[edit] External links

• Information about Schwabacher (in German)

[edit] Notes and References