Fraktur
Sometimes referred to as the “Nazi Font”, it was infamously used on the MAGA hat that Elon Musk wore to a President Trump political rally at Madison Square Garden on 27 October 2024.
We have previously characterised Comic Sans [RR1:14] as the “The Most Hated Font in History”, and now it’s time to look at what might be the world’s most emotionally loaded font.
We’re talking about Fraktur, a decorative style of “blackletter” typeface that originated in the early 16th century in Germany. Unlike more fluid scripts, Fraktur features distinct, separate strokes that break and angle sharply, which is where it gets its name – “fraktur” coming from the Latin fractura meaning “to break”.
The raison dêtre for blackletter was initially pragmatic. It was easier for monks using quills to scribe consistent-looking Os, Us and Cs using a series of short straight lines, and it’s this technique that gave the letters their distinctive fragmented appearance. Fraktur became popular during the Renaissance and was widely used for German texts. For centuries, it was a standard typeface in German-speaking regions, representing a sense of national identity.
By the end of the 16th century, more legible Roman fonts had become common in the typed vernacular languages of France and Spain. England followed suit in the 17th century, then the Netherlands and Sweden in the 18th. But even as Roman became the western world’s dominant form of writing, Germany and the German language stayed resolutely committed to blackletter, mostly thanks to Martin Luther. Luther was a prolific writer of the German language and wanted to distinguish German writing from the Catholic writing coming out of Italy, so he made sure all his texts were printed in blackletter. Fraktur’s connection with nationalism only got stronger in the 19th century when Germany was invaded by Napoleon. The occupying French had their Roman letters, and the Germans had Fraktur. [Ed: The font wars!]
By the 20th century, however, its use diminished due to associations with Nazi Germany, which initially promoted Fraktur as part of German heritage but later banned it, deeming it outdated and “un-German”. (Ironically, Hitler didn’t particularly like Fraktur, as he didn’t think that being German should mean being old-fashioned and provincial.)
While rarely used in body text, Fraktur is often used in logos, signage, and designs that evoke a historical or gothic feel. It’s a typeface that you often see used for the bold front titles of newspapers like The New York Times or The Washington Post … or maybe on the T-shirts of heavy metal bands.
But for many people, especially in Europe, blackletter is still used to signal German nationalism, and one particular version of nationalism, which is why it is often referred to as the “Nazi Font”.
It was notable, therefore, that the “Make America Great Again” hat that Elon Musk wore to president Donald Trump’s political rally at Madison Square Garden (MSG) on 27 October 2024 was all black, with the MAGA lettering (unusually) rendered in Fraktur. Especially relevant since the Garden had famously been the venue for a US Nazi Party rally in 1939. Too much of a shit-stir to be a coincidence?
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