This Pennsylvania German Broadsides and Fraktur digital project relates to a larger enterprise already in progress at Göttingen State and University Library in Germany. Their three year project (Bibliography and Edition of Broadsides Printed in North America in the German Language, 1700 to 1839) is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation). These broadsides will be made accessible in a bibliography and in digitized form.
Broadsides printed in German in North America featured commentaries on political events, devotional hymns, lists of books for sale, prescriptions for medical treatments, and many other topics. Printers, especially in Pennsylvania, with its high number of German immigrants, hoped for a good market when they published documents in this language. The German-American Broadsides Project at the Göttingen State and University Library has collected more than 1400 broadsides from libraries, archives, and private collections.
Penn State's digital project includes Pennsylvania German fraktur as well as broadsides. The birth and baptism certificate, or Taufschein, is by far the most common form of fraktur and is unique to Pennsylvania German culture. Although illuminated manuscripts were made throughout Europe, they did not combine the birth and baptism in one document, nor did they include detailed biographical information about the child and his parents, common in Pennsylvania German examples. Printed examples first appeared in 1780, and by 1825 printed birth and baptismal certificates dominated, with blank spaces to be filled in by scribes to personalize the documents. Printed certificates were often hand-colored or embellished with artwork, sometimes by the family.
Taufschein were personal family records and were often not displayed but kept in storage—tucked into books or Bibles, for example. These birth and baptismal certificates offer unique opportunities for genealogists because of the information they contain: name of child, birth and baptismal dates, geographical location, father's name, mother's maiden name, and sometimes the pastor's and witnesses' names.
Other forms of fraktur include Vorschriften, or writing specimens, often given to pupils by their teachers as a reward of merit. The subjects of fraktur included religious texts, hymns, and house blessings (Haus Segen). Some took the form of bookmarks, paper cut-outs, or spiritual mazes (Irrgarten).
The study of fraktur involves many disciplines: religious history; local and family history; Pennsylvania folk art; 18th- and 19th-century German lettering; and the history of printing. Fraktur vividly document the transfer of European culture to North America.
