Conference Participation: Fraktur and the Everyday Lives of Germans in Pennsylvania and the Atlantic World, 1683-1850
The tradition of making fraktur was brought to Pennsylvania by German-speaking settlers in the eighteenth century. A form of manuscript art, fraktur includes birth and baptismal certificates, writing samples, valentines, and religious texts, executed in ink and watercolor with a distinctive broken or “fractured” style of lettering and embellished with decorative motifs such as hearts, flowers, birds, and angels.
An international group of scholars will gather to discuss how these small but exuberantly decorated documents celebrated important moments in their owners’ personal lives, as well as the historical and cultural contexts in which they were created. Topics to be addressed range from patterns of migration, education, and religious practices to music, farming, medicine, and the occult, in addition to how fraktur were made and collected. Professor Overhoff was invited to act as panel chair during the conference.