Fraktur or Antiqua in primary schools? The struggle for a unified typeface in German-speaking Switzerland between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Abstract

In this paper, we analyse the struggle for a unified style of writing in primary schools in the German-speaking part of Switzerland between the 1860s and the first decades of the twentieth century with regard to the contexts in which this struggle was embedded. In the late-nineteenth century, in German-speaking Switzerland, as in other parts of the German-speaking realm, a controversy emerged regarding whether general writing practices (handwriting and print) should adhere to the traditional Gothic script and typefaces called Fraktur Show more