Fraktur in Gdansk

 In 1538 Ludwig Neudorfer, a calligrapher of Imperial Chancery, published a book about writing letters which were at the time called "Gothic", as opposed to the Renaissance writing based on classical monuments, at the time in fashion in Italy. His book became popular in German-speaking areas and his style spread especially during the Baroque era. He introduced very elaborate capital letters, never used in Middle Ages but afterwards associated with Gothic script, which was then called "fraktur". They can be seen in many places where there was German-speaking population. 

Here is an example from Gdansk, which during the Baroque era was in the Kingdom of Poland but its inhabitants were mostly German-speaking Lutherans. Here it seems that the Neudorfer-style elaborate decorative letters are not only initials, but just capitals, which in German would mean the first letter of any noun. Not to speak of the first letter of each line of a poem, which appears to be one case. 

There is a book available, based on this blog.  

On the blog there is, so to speak, more room, one can show more illustrations there. Blogs, however, come and go, there is no certainty that it will be there ten years from now. The book, on the other hand, once you acquire it, will last, one can be sure of that.