Can Germans still read black-letter text?

[psychonaut]

@Nava

But exactly: they didn’t want to convey modernity, any more than people who use it now do. It was used among other reasons: to remind people of a Glorious Past (Make Deutschalnd Great Again); because it’s Traditional; because we like it damnit. Nowadays it’s also used mostly in stuff trying to look sort of vintage-ish and old-fashioned; you expect to see it on parchment, diplomas, inn signs, not on the brass plaque announcing an architectural firm (unless they specialize in restorations of ancient buildings, of course).

I also tend to notice it in a minority of street signs, like these ones. The signs aren’t always located in the old parts of the city, so I don’t think they’re trying to fit in with old-fashioned surroundings. And the signs themselves don’t look to be of particularly old construction, though maybe they really are old (but well-preserved). Maybe the municipal signage people just like a little variety, kind of how like the East German Ampelmännchen pedestrian signal is occasionally used now in West German cities. (Where I live, about 10% of the pedestrian crossing signs are Ampelmännchen.)

[clairobscur]

I found the OP link very interesting (it’s about the D-Day). Even though it’s not devoid of propaganda, the first part at least is more documentary-like than I would have expected (the second part is quite centered on allied and civilian losses).

The whole serie of German newsreels is interesting, in fact. I saw the German equivalent of Rosie the riveeter, and am now watching German “skillfull withdrawal movements” (during the battle of Normandy).

[Doughbag]

As a German, I can read it just fine, although my reading speed slows down a bit, but this is due to this a not so easy to read font. But once you’re used to it, you read it just fine.

Handwriting - don’t go there! Since may people just have a terrible scribble - modern and old.

[Schnitte]

@Doughbag

As a German, I can read it just fine, although my reading speed slows down a bit, but this is due to this a not so easy to read font. But once you’re used to it, you read it just fine.

Same here. German native speaker, reading blackletter print works just fine. Also for extended texts, not just an isolated word, and it works fluently, not laborious word-by-word decyphering, even though reading speed might go down a little. It’s really not that difficult; it’s not another alphabet, after all, only a particular font of the alphabet we’re familiar with.

By the way, until ~10 years ago, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the leading daily newspaper in Germany, used blackletter as a font for the headings (not the text itself) of its editorials. This website features an example from 2001.

[Schnitte]

@Just_Asking_Questions

Danke.

Just an opinion, but to me, that font looks…old. I mean in context - in 1941 I would think that Germany was living in the past, with such a vintage-looking font. Like they were trying to relive the glorious days of the past century. Germany was trying to be the greatest country in the world, and their printed media looks like it should have hand drawn illumination on the sides.

I’m not sating they needed to use comic sans, but there must have been something better, something that conveyed modernity and power without all those needless strokes.

I think that impression is anachronistic in the sense that it projects present-day views onto the 1940s. To a non-German of the days, blackletter might have appeared old-fashioned, but not terribly old-fashioned and outdated; to a German, it was one of two alternatives which had been in parallel use alongside each other for a long time. And by “German” in that sense I mean native speaker of the German language, not necessarily a resident of the country of Germany - blackletter was also in widespread use in Switzerland, and certainly not for adherence to Nazi ideology. Old habits die hard; if much of German literature from the past is written in that font, then it’s going to stick around for a while without any political ideology behind this.

[Clothahump]

@Just_Asking_Questions

But it’s not just a font. It’s a hard-to-read font. (unless you’re used to it, I suppose).

I can read a little German, in a proper font.

But look at that newspaper (33 seconds). “Night Edition” is easy. But gott in himmel, what is that last sentence? Is that a “C”? Is that last word “Oange”? “Gange”? And that first letter in “American” - is that “2l”?

When I learned German, the textbooks were printed in Fraktur type, so those newspapers look like old friends. That last sentence, in whatever font this is (Arial, I believe) is “erbitterte kaempfe im Gange”, which roughly translates to “fierce fighting in progress”.