Blackletter, also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule or Gothic type, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish until the 1870s, Finnish until the turn of the 20th century, Latvian until the 1930s, and for the German language until the 1940s, when Hitler officially discontinued it in 1941. Fraktur is a notable script of this type, and sometimes the entire group of blackletter faces is referred to as Fraktur. Blackletter is sometimes referred to as Old English, but it is not to be confused with the Old English language, which predates blackletter by many centuries and was written in the insular script or in Futhorc. Along with Italic type and Roman type, blackletter served as one of the major typefaces in the history of Western typography.
Blackletter
Page of a rare blackletter Bible, 1497, printed in Strasbourg by Johann Grüninger, then one of the city's most prolific printers. The red chapter initials were handwritten by a rubricator after printing.
Blackletter in a Latin Bible of 1407 AD, on display in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, England
Handbill of 1715, with the main text in blackletter type, publishing a royal proclamation for the apprehension of the Jacobite leader Sir William Wyndham
The Antiqua–Fraktur dispute was a typographical dispute in 19th- and early 20th-century Germany.
Two typefaces: the German text uses Fraktur; numerals and Latin and French words are written in Antiqua (1768).
