Ludwig Sütterlin (July 23, 1865 – November 20, 1917) was a graphic artist who lived in Berlin, Germany, and was most notable for designing and creating the old German blackletter handwriting Sütterlinschrift (Sütterlin script) or simply

Sütterlin (, " script") is the last widely used form of , the historical form of German handwriting that evolved alongside German blackletter (most notably ') typefaces. Graphic artist Ludwig Sütterlin was commissioned by the Prussian Ministry of Scien ...

. Ludwig was born on July 23, 1865, in

Lahr Lahr (officially Lahr/Schwarzwald since 30 September 1978) (); gsw, label=Low Alemannic, Lohr) is a town in western Baden-Württemberg, Germany, approximately 50 km north of Freiburg im Breisgau, 40 km southeast of Strasbourg, and 95&nbs ...

, located within the

Schwarzwald The Black Forest (german: Schwarzwald ) is a large forested mountain range in the state of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany, bounded by the Rhine Valley to the west and south and close to the borders with France and Switzerland. It is t ...

(Black Forest). Although Sütterlin's childhood is currently unknown, the most notable years of his life began when he moved to

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

and began his profession as a graphic artist—gaining fame for a poster submitted to the

Industrial Exhibition A trade fair, also known as trade show, trade exhibition, or trade exposition, is an exhibition organized so that companies in a specific industry can showcase and demonstrate their latest products and services, meet with industry partners and cu ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

, 1896. Later, Sütterlin worked as a teacher at the "Teaching Institution of the Royal Museum of Decorative Arts" in Berlin, and the future "United State Schools for Free and Applied Arts," where he held courses in artistic fonts. In 1911, Sütterlin was tasked by the Royal Prussian Ministry of Culture to create courses for preschool and school. This connection to the education system could possibly have led him to his future ambition to create a national script for Germany. At the time, the current writing style was based on alternating pressure, which made it difficult for primary school pupils to hurdle the writing exercises, leading Ludwig to develop a child-oriented methodology for writing beginners: making the line width uniform, all letters vertical and geometrically straight or circular. This new and more simple writing allowed all students, artistically inclined or not, to be able to write the script. In 1914, the initial trials of using Sütterlin in Berlin schools began and ultimately was declared Berlin's national script for education by Prussia in 1924. Most other German states (i.g., Oldenburg, Thuringia, Hesse, and Baden) followed the example of Prussia, so that from about 1930 Germany mainly introduced Sütterlin for education. Unfortunately for Sütterlin, he was not able to see his work come to fruition, for he died 7 years before in Berlin on November 20, 1917.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sutterlin, Ludwig 1865 births 1917 deaths German artists German calligraphers German graphic designers