To be able to read the German script, one must learn the letters. You may as well start with the letter " A " as is used in Anna and Andreas. You cannot go far without knowing the " A ". It is a moderately difficult letter for me, because I learned a standard way it was to be written and the pastor at Gemmingen did not write it that way. This is one of the frustrations of this business. You have learned it one way and they never write that way. The capital letters are important because so much of the information is conveyed in the first letter. After the first letter, it is all downhill, as the pastor loses interest in writing the rest of the letters.
You should probably learn " B " as it is very useful to write Barbara, and Barbara is a favorite name. All of the letters may be written in either the Latin style or in the German script. Some words mix the two styles. Any one baptismal record is almost sure to have some of both styles. This means the alphabet is 52 plus letters. I say plus, because the Germans have a few more letters than we do.
If you have ancestors with the name Catharina, you will want to know the capital " C ". Now a German may write the " C " all over the place, but likely down into the line below just to see if you are paying attention. Just about when you believe that you have learned what a " C " looks like, they spring another surprise on you. It is the superscript " C " as in " Ch ". The " C " is written way above the line at the upper end of the " h ", almost as if it is hanging from it. (It is funny how words like "hanging" will occur to you when you studying German script.) The only way one recognizes it is to puzzle out the balance of the word with a question mark for the funny hook hanging on the " h ". Then you can see that you would have a recognizable word if the question mark were a " C ". This might occur with the name Christina.
Incidentally, the technique just mentioned, of writing out what you think you can recognize, will sometime solve the problem because what you can understand may be a clue to the letters that you do not understand.
Perhaps you have a Dorothea. The capital " D " is a near favorite of mine because there is a basic principle in writing the " D " that is hard to mask. Another point that makes it a little easier to recognize is that it is similar to English colonial writing with the backward slanting upward extension. The real clue is the way the near loop at the bottom is formed. A " D " goes counterclockwise as opposed to the "S" which goes clockwise.
The "
E
" is not hard to recognize if you can distinguish it from the "
C
". Sometimes the difference is subtle but if you want your Eva to come right you will need to know the difference.
(08 Sep 03)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.