Fraktur, though technically a variation of Latin script, evolved into a particular script all its own. Long after most of Western Europe had abandoned blackletter typefaces for their formal documents, the Fraktur alphabet was still being used for the German language into the 20th century, until it was banned by the Nazis. Even before this, German publication had been increasingly shifting to modern Antiqua-style Latin script typefaces, and this was more or less permanent after World War II. Fraktur is still used in German for decorative purposes, but no longer as the default standard print typeface.

This is one of the more challenging bitmap fonts I've ever done. First, I tried to design it as an 8x8px font, but realized that there was no space left to fit the umlauts so ubiquitous in German. So this version is proportional-width only. (UPDATE March 8: I added an 8x8px version. Still, Fraktur has never been meant to be used as an all-caps script, so I don't recommend that.) For the sake of horizontal condensation, I didn't include as many serifs as I would have liked to, but I still think it looks nice.

In Fraktur, there are two kinds of lowercase S: ſ (long s) and s. ſ was actually the normal lowercase s, whilst s itself was only used at the ends of words. The ſ form of lowercase S had also been used in English until about the 1700s or 1800s or so, as it had been used in English secretary hand. But it was always fairly easy to confuse the letter with lowercase f, and the wider availability of printing press technology replaced secretary hand for most formal uses, and ſ fell out of fashion in English, but not yet in German.

The bottom row are most of the many lowercase ligatures. These are special German letter combinations that were traditionally printed more closely together. They are:
ch ck ff ft lf lt ſch ſſ ſt ſz tt tz
Since German for the most part no longer uses Fraktur for formal printing, most of these ligatures are moribund except for ſz. Though originally a ligature of S and Z (Eszett), it became pronounced like SS, and German Antiqua typefaces instead fashioned the ligature ſs, which became fused as the modern German letter ß.

BACKGROUND: I used to have a much more active hobby of designing bitmap fonts. Little (usually 8x8px monospace) fonts designed for use in older 8-bit and sometimes 16-bit video games. It was kinda fun to hack ROMs to change the text fonts. Later, when Final Fantasy VI font became readily editable in 11px high proportional typeface, I started designing proportional fonts too. Nearly all my designs are revised in subtle ways over the years.