#Some of the examples have transcriptions in the source link if you're curious

[average-imperfection]

The ghosts and German handwriting

Completely niche, self-indulgent topic no one cares about except me but I would really love an episode in S2 where Emma finds an old hand-written document that she wants to decipher, and she goes to the ghosts for help, only to find that none of the ghosts can read it either because 1) it's just plain bad handwriting and 2) it's written in this specific handwriting that was only taught in schools from the 1910s to the 1940s and they don't have a ghost from that period on hand. Context: Around the beginning of the Modern era, in Germany (and some other countries too but this is about Germany) people started using two parallel handwriting systems. One, the so-called Latin cursive, was very close to the cursives used in other countries at the time and can still be read somewhat easily today. The other, the more commonly used one, was called Kurrent. Which one you used depended on context. Loan words, place names and quotes for example would often be written in Latin cursive, even if the rest of the text was in Kurrent. Here an example of the word Generalienmäßig (in the manner of generals) which has the first half written in Latin cursive and the second part in Kurrent to show the difference.

People nowadays still learn cursive in school (at least they did when I was in school) but since the 40s they'd only learn a cursive close to the Latin one. Kurrent has completely disappeared from schools and now you'll mostly only encounter it at the university level when you're studying history or archival science or something similar. Svenni and Joachim probably didn't learn how to read/write it. But, if Kurrent has been around for so long, wouldn't Friedrich or Adelheid be able to read it? Generally, yes. But of course writing styles have evolved over the 200+/100+ years since they've been dead as well. Here's what Friedrich's handwriting could have looked like:

(This one's a bit of a mix of Kurrent and Latin cursive but wikimedia didn't have any other good examples for Friedrich's time so it is what it is lol Here are Friedrich's and Ludwig's actual handwritings from the show, even if they're not very legible. Kudos to the set dressers and the actors for actually using Kurrent!)

And this is what Adelheid's Kurrent could have looked like:

Okay but now to the super specific 1910s to 1940 kinda Kurrent! It's called Sütterlin after the guy who invented it, it was in part inspired by the Jugendstil/Art Nouveau art movement and its main goal was to simplify the cursive for school kids to learn it easier. It looks a little something like this:

This one's a pretty neat and legible example but if the handwriting was really bad, on top of it being a new variant of Kurrent, even Friedrich and Adelheid could struggle a bit to read it. In the end of the episode maybe they find a new ghost that can read it, maybe it gives Urs a moment to shine or maybe it was Lotti's diary all along, any of these outcomes would be a lot of fun~ (And just for completion's sake, I don't know if Urs and Griet can write and/or read, but I'm sure Claudius can and his handwriting would probably look like this (which also wouldn't be very useful to Emma's deciphering quest lol):