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Of fonts, and dogs, and race

Fraktur is a Gothic typeface that was popular in Germany in the early 20th century. Then Martin Bormann issued a decree condemning it as Jewish.

It is false to regard or describe the so-called Gothic typeface as a German typeface. In reality the so-called Gothic typeface consists of Schwabacher-Jewish letters. Just as they later came to own the newspapers, the Jews living in Germany also owned the printing presses when the printing of books was introduced and thus came about the strong influx into Germany of Schwabacher-Jewish letters.

The German Shepherd was the product of Captain von Stephanitz’s efforts to breed a working shepherd dog. He defined the breed standard for German Shepherds; the original dog recognized as a German Shepherd was dark-coated, but his grandsire was a white dog, and he sired both white dogs and dark-coated dogs that bore the recessive white coat gene. But then the Nazis decided that white German Shepherds were racially inferior.

The Nazis, including Hitler, saw the white coat as an undesirable trait, and further assumed that the white coated dogs’ genes paled the darker coated dogs’ colors. With little knowledge of science, they blamed the whites for many diseases as well. Germany soon barred white German Shepherds from the conformation ring and the breeding pool.

I imagine one could dedicate a daily blog to wacky Nazi beliefs and have material for years.

Comments

Interesting that a white GSD was a Horand grandsire... thanks for the link.

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