"Schätzje'! What are you doing?"
That little girl, normally sharp as a tack, is on the top of a stack of Encyclopedias on one of the kitchen chairs, which she has dragged in front of the large bookshelf. My old, green, felt Tiroler hat is lying on the floor behind her and she is standing on tippy toes reaching for a volume on the very top shelf.
I rush over and she turns to give me the look, the one that children give adults at a time like this.
"Schätzje'! You know you can ask me for help anytime. Which book do you want?"
She points up to a dark blue book. On the spine in gold is Horns Spinnstube 9. I help her down from the precarious perch and then reach up to ease out the book. She is standing with both hands held out, and when I give her the book, she runs her fingers over the embossed cover. "Wow! It's really old, isn't it?"
"Sure is. From 1864."
She very carefully opens it and as soon as she sees the old Fraktur, her forehead crinkles. "Can you read this?"
"Come on, let's go sit on the sofa and we'll read it together."
The ancient-looking script excites her and I'm happy to see how quickly she is picking it up. In a few hours, she's reading to me the word puzzles written so long ago by Wilhelm Horn. Then, the inevitable question: "Why don't they use this kind of writing any more?"
So I tell her about 1940's Germany, about the NSDAP, and about horrible men who described (incorrectly) this "gothic" typescript as "Jew-letters from Schwabach" and so ordered that only Latin Antiqua be utilized from 1941 on. When they became masters of the world, they thought, this would enable everyone to read their writings. "Do you remember that stamp I showed you, the red one with the M on it?" I ask her.
She nods her head. "That M is like the M in this book!"
I smile. "Yep. The Allies used Fraktur on the first postage stamp they printed after the War ended."
That little girl is now happily able to read books set in Fraktur.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
Interesting story! So what I always thought was called Gothic is really Fraktur, a variant of it? It's funny, I was just talking about Gothic script with a German friend last week - he can still write it. I used to, as a child, be able to read the old Finnish Gothic hymn books that were still used by the Lutheran overseas ministry back then. Now I have difficulty. We didn't know of the reason behind the ban in 1941. Fascinating history on those fonts at wikipedia - thanks for the history lesson!
DASS wusste ich nicht!
schoenes wochenende
beth
I take it Schatzje is the diminutive of Schatz but, boy, that consonantal combination of tzje is really a hurdle for an off-cum'd-un, the word that troglodytes from the West Riding (where I was born) use to describe a so-called foreigner. I know why the child was impressed with German script, it always suggests the wisdom of the ages to me. Those who don't need to be told about Herr Schickelgruber's intervention in this matter might be placated by a forgivable white lie: it had to go because the German people cleverly foresaw word processing.
I think Northern Europeans dubbed the Fraktur alphabet "Gothic" or "Black Letter." Once printing was introduced by Gutenberg, the first type-cutters fashioned the letters into a more angular shape to make their work simpler. Much later, efforts to reform the script resulted in at least half a dozen different Fraktur fonts. Jacob Grimm was an early advocate for using Antiqua in printing scientific books, and indeed, by 1928, 43% of the books printed in German utilized Antiqua. A bit ironic, eh?!
BB! Take the last sound in the English word "tests" and then say Schätz-- and end with a yeh sound (short e). Voila!
Just another example of how blind people at the time could be in accepting Herr Schickelgruber/Hiedler/Hüttler's edicts without question.
She was so desperate to get to that book wasn't she? You have used your 'word camera' to paint a truely beautiful scene here R.
Thank you so much, hhnb! She had her eye on an interesting one for sure. More to come on the Spinnstube in the days ahead ...
Fascinating! Besides reading the Fraktur, the little girl reads German? Bright young thing, isn't she!
Post a Comment