Old German handwriting to text: Kurrent and Sütterlin letters, typed out
A letter from Germany that nobody in the family can read any more is usually not badly written. It is written in a different alphabet. Upload a photo and get the German text in ordinary letters; the first page is free, the whole document is $5.
Why old German letters look unreadable
Until the middle of the twentieth century most Germans did not write the Latin cursive taught today. They wrote Kurrent, and from 1915 onward many schoolchildren learned Sütterlin, a simplified form designed for Prussian schools. Both were dropped from the curriculum in 1941, so a writer born before about 1930 almost certainly used one of them.
In these scripts several letters look like something else to a modern eye. The small e resembles an n. The u carries a small arc above it to tell it apart from n. There is a long s that looks like an f without its bar, and h, s and z drop below the line in ways that surprise first-time readers. A word like "sehen" can look like a row of identical strokes.
What the tool does differently for German
When you choose German before uploading, the reader is told to expect Kurrent or Sütterlin rather than modern handwriting. It returns the German text letter for letter, with ß and umlauts, in the original spelling. It does not translate: once the text is typed out, any translator can take it from there, and you keep an exact German version to check names and places against.
What families usually bring
- Letters from relatives who stayed in Germany, Austria or Switzerland
- Field post (Feldpost) from the First and Second World Wars
- Parish register entries: baptisms, marriages and burials
- Passports, discharge papers and emigration documents
- Recipe books and family chronicles
Everything about how the tool works, what it costs and how your documents are handled is on the handwriting to text page.
Questions and answers
Does it read Sütterlin as well as Kurrent?
Yes. Choose German and it expects either script. Mixed pages are common, since many writers used Kurrent for German words and Latin letters for names and foreign words.
Will it translate the letter into English?
No. It gives you the German text exactly as written. That is the hard part; the typed German can then be translated with any translation tool.
What about printed Fraktur?
The tool is built for handwriting. Printed Fraktur on the same page, such as a form heading, is included in the text when it is part of the document.