THE GOLDEN AGE OF FRAKTUR
The “golden age” of fraktur dated from approximately 1775 to 1835, though there were marked and important exceptions to these dates. The year 1835 is acknowledged as the year when hand written and drawn fraktur – as opposed to the printed variety,– began to disappear from the culture due to the introduction of the Free Public School Act in Pennsylvania. Schoolmasters previously employed by religious groups were among the chief makers of fraktur, and with the phasing in of municipally-run schools in the state, some of their traditional teaching methods would fall by the wayside.
The word fraktur is derived from the German Frakturschriften, meaning manuscripts written in the Fraktur hand. Fraktur writing, as the eminent folklorist Dr. Don Yoder explains in his article The European Background of Pennsylvania’s Fraktur Art” in Bucks County Fraktur that Fraktur writing
…means an elaborate form of manuscript lettering and the printer’s typeface derived from it. A related form is the black-letter script of England, called Gothic or Old English.[1]
[1] Don Yoder,The European Background of Pennsylvania’s Fraktur Art, in Bucks County Fraktur, ed.