What Is Fraktur?

Fraktur is the best-known style of blackletter typeface. It was developed in Germany in the early 16th century, commonly credited to the court of Emperor Maximilian I, and became the standard type for German books, newspapers and official documents until the 20th century. Compared with the older Textura, Fraktur letters have curved parts that break into pointed shapes, a clear contrast of thick and thin, and decorative forms such as swashed capitals.

Distinctive features

• Broken curves. Round letters such as o are formed by pointed, angled strokes. The word Fraktur comes from the Latin fractura, “a break”.
• Long s (ſ). Fraktur used a long s at the start and in the middle of words and the round s at the end. Because of this, printed German texts can look to modern eyes as if they contain f.
• Distinct capitals. Capitals are ornate and some are hard to recognise without practice; in older texts I and J often share one form.
• Ligatures. Fraktur typefaces have many ligatures, including ch, ck, tz and the long-s combinations (ſt, ſſ, ß).

From national style to decline

German printers used Fraktur for German text and a roman type for Latin and foreign words, a habit that lasted for centuries. In 1941 the Nazi government banned Fraktur as “Jewish letters” (Schwabacher Judenlettern) and ordered roman type, a fact often forgotten because propaganda had promoted Fraktur as a national style. Today Fraktur is read in historical documents and used for tradition, beer labels, and sometimes in far-right contexts, which is worth knowing if you plan to use it for a brand.

Fraktur in Unicode

The Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols block contains Fraktur and bold Fraktur alphabets, intended for mathematics, where Fraktur letters denote Lie algebras or ideals. Fancy text generators, including the old English text generator, reuse them. Look at the word:

𝔉𝔯𝔞𝔨𝔱𝔲𝔯 (regular) and 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖐𝖙𝖚𝖗 (bold)

Five regular capitals are missing from that block. Unicode already had ℭ (U+212D), ℌ (U+210C), ℑ (U+2111), ℜ (U+211C) and ℨ (U+2128) in the Letterlike Symbols block, so a generator maps C, H, I, R, Z to those. A font that covers one block but not the other may draw the letters in different styles in the same word, or show a box. Details of this behaviour appear in why fancy text shows boxes.

Because these are mathematics characters, there is no ß, no umlauted vowels and no long s in the set, so German words cannot be written correctly with them.

Fraktur in lettering

When you draw Fraktur by hand, begin with the basic blackletter strokes and then add the Fraktur-specific features: a pointed top-left on the vertical stems, and diamond serifs. Practise the lowercase before the capitals; the capitals are built from loops and hairline flourishes that are easier once the lowercase rhythm is established.

For a deeper look at how it fits among other hand styles, read what is lettering.

Common confusions

• Fraktur is not a font. It is a style; fonts such as UnifrakturMaguntia, Breitkopf Fraktur and Old London implement it.
• Fraktur is not “all of gothic”. Blackletter also includes Textura and Rotunda.
• Mathematical Fraktur is not a text font. It was encoded for equations, not for German typesetting.