Kurrent Lab:Alte Schrift lesen

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About this app

You're holding an old letter, a diary entry from your great-grandmother, or a church register entry from the 19th century, but the letters seem like a secret code? Kurrent Lab transforms the enigmatic flow of old German cursive script into legible German. Step by step, from individual letters to actual historical texts.

What you'll learn with Kurrent Lab

The app guides you systematically through German Kurrent and Sütterlin scripts, the two forms of old German handwriting that were standard in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland until the mid-20th century. You learn each letter in direct comparison to modern Latin script and steadily develop your reading fluency to confidently decipher historical documents.

Whether you're preparing for genealogy and family history research, working in an archive, want to decipher old family letters, or deal with historical sources professionally: Kurrent Lab gives you the tools you need.

Key Features

* Structured learning path with all letters, special forms, ligatures, and exercises

* Alphabet chart for direct comparison of Latin script, Kurrent, and Sütterlin
* Reading practice for common confusions such as e and n, h and s, or K and B

* Animated writing movements and character view for better memorization of each script
* Reading corner with short stories, Wikipedia articles, and genuine original documents from archives
* Line help and word breakdown when reading historical texts
* Writing room for entering, displaying, and sharing your own texts in Kurrent
* Progress indicator for each learning unit.


* Who Kurrent Lab is for

* Genealogists and genealogists who want to decipher church records, civil registry documents, and family records
* Students, teachers, and instructors of history, German studies, and archival science
* Amateur historians who want to read old letters, diaries, and postcards of their ancestors
* Staff in archives, museums, and libraries who work with old German handwriting on a daily basis
* Local historians and members of historical and genealogical societies
* Anyone who finally wants to truly learn to read German cursive script, Sütterlin, or Kurrent

A little background

Kurrent script has its roots in the 16th century and shaped writing in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland for over 400 years. Sütterlin script was developed in 1911 by Ludwig Sütterlin as a simplified school handwriting style and was compulsory in German schools until 1941. Anyone wanting to understand old letters, documents, diaries, or church records from the 18th, 19th, or early 20th centuries will inevitably encounter these two scripts.

Kurrent Lab doesn't teach you these scripts in a dry, theoretical way, but directly using the actual materials. You'll practice on original documents and see step by step how words are formed from seemingly chaotic lines.

Get started now

Download Kurrent Lab and decipher your first old letter. After just a few lessons, you'll recognize words that previously looked like a jumble of characters.

What’s new

Kleine UI-Updates