Fette Fraktur is a

blackletter Blackletter (sometimes black letter or black-letter), 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 ...

typeface of the sub-classification

Fraktur Fraktur () is a calligraphic hand of the Latin alphabet and any of several blackletter typefaces derived from this hand. It is designed such that the beginnings and ends of the individual strokes that make up each letter will be clearly vis ...

designed by the German punchcutter Johann Christian Bauer (1802–1867) in 1850. The C.E. Weber Foundry published a version in 1875, and the D Stempel AG foundry published the version shown here in 1908. Fette Fraktur (German for bold Fraktur) is based on the Fraktur type of blackletter faces. This heavy nineteenth century version was developed more for advertising than text, similar to the extremely heavy

fat face In typography, a fat face letterform is a serif typeface or piece of lettering in the Didone (typography), Didone or modern style with an extremely bold design. Fat face typefaces appeared in London around 1805–1810 and became widely popular; ...

advertising versions of Didone classification faces.

History

For a span of nearly a hundred years, the original Fraktur script was used as a standard text face in German-speaking Europe and parts of Scandinavia. During the period of the

Third Reich Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...

Fraktur and blackletter faces were initially approved of in contrast to sans-serif faces (associated with the

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the , was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined Decorative arts, crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., ...

and cultural Bolshevism). Approved use of blackletter Fraktur faces by the Nazi regime continued until January 3, 1941, when

Martin Bormann Martin Ludwig Bormann (17 June 1900 – 2 May 1945) was a German Nazi Party official and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, private secretary to Adolf Hitler, and a war criminal. Bormann gained immense power by using his position as Hitler ...

, director of the Party Chancellery issued a directive discontinuing the use of blackletter faces because of an alleged discovery of Jewish contributions in the development of these faces. Another reason may have been their limited legibility outside of Germany. While the

Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

s forbade its use for practical and ideological reasons, at the conclusion of World War II, the Allied forces also prohibited it for a time because occupation troops could not read these faces. Eventually the ban on blackletter and Frakturs was lifted, but in Germany and Scandinavia the faces were largely replaced by the Antiqua (roman) alphabet. Emotional reaction to association with the Third Reich, and a sense that the faces were outdated vestiges of the nineteenth century further reduced their use. Variants of Fraktur faces, such as Fette Fraktur, are however used in advertising and packaging to communicate a sense of traditional Austrian, Bavarian, or German flavor. In this modern decorative use the Fraktur rules about

long s The long s, , also known as the medial ''s'' or initial ''s'', is an Archaism, archaic form of the lowercase letter , found mostly in works from the late 8th to early 19th centuries. It replaced one or both of the letters ''s'' in a double-''s ...

and short s or about

ligature Ligature may refer to: Language * Ligature (writing), a combination of two or more letters into a single symbol (typography and calligraphy) * Ligature (grammar), a morpheme that links two words Medicine * Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture us ...

s are often disregarded, the knowledge of the old typographical conventions being lost.

Confusion with Textualis

Fette Fraktur (and Fraktur typefaces in general) have sometimes been confused for another kind of blackletter script (the style often mislabeled Old English), which has become popular in the world of

hip-hop Hip-hop or hip hop (originally disco rap) is a popular music genre that emerged in the early 1970s from the African-American community of New York City. The style is characterized by its synthesis of a wide range of musical techniques. Hi ...

music and fashion. Those forms of blackletter, however, derive from Textualis, not from Fraktur, and have been influenced by the chicano urban culture of

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

, California.

References

*Blackwell, Lewis. ''20th Century Type.'' Yale University Press: 2004. . *Bain, Peter and Paul Shaw. ''Blackletter: Type and National Identity.'' Princeton Architectural Press: 1998. . *Macmillan, Neil. ''An A–Z of Type Designers.'' Yale University Press: 2006. . {{Reflist Stempel typefaces Blackletter typefaces

History

Confusion with Textualis

See also

References