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> Fraktur is now associated with the Nazis, who used it extensively in propaganda, going so far as to outfit government offices with Fraktur typewriters.
Actually, Fraktur was banned in 1941 and the regime transitioned to Latin writing (Futura was used quite extensively).
A bit more detail: the Nazis "banished" (discouraged, really) san-serif fonts, mainly because the futurists were considered degenerate; Fraktur grew in use under the urging of Himmler due to his weird beliefs about Germany's "original" culture (so-called Bauernkultur) that supposedly reinforced the racial claims. Most documents continued to be written in roman script (I have never seen a Fraktur Enigma or teletype, and have read plenty of memos and reports from that era on wikipedia most of which were in roman script). Billboards and public notices were increasingly
But it wasn't all government; newspapers (most notoriously Der Stürmer, but many others), street signs, shop signs driving licenses (still valid today) and such were increasingly written in Fraktur.
Then suddenly one day in 1941 it was suddenly declared „Judenschrift‟ -- "jewish writing", and this time a writing was declared legally forbidden. And as far as I can tell, nobody knows why!
Despite all that I have found in my mother in law's house books in Fraktur from the 30s, 40s, and even a couple from the 50s. I have one from the 50s on my desk right now! And you do see it on various signs in shops, some street name signs, and other random other places, especially when you want an old-timey feel (traditional restaurant, perhaps Glühwein Bude in the woods, and such). If people had a strong nazi identification I don't think you'd see it. Maybe that's just a USA thing. Fraktur was used extensively in other parts east of Germany (e.g. Czech) well into the 20th century as well, but I haven't seen it so much there -- I wouldn't at all be surprised if that was due to the Nazi past.
Fraktur has some nice ligatures, including ch, ck, ss, sz, ch, sch, tz, etc, of which only ß (and ä, ö, ü of course) survived in roman. Weirdly, ß is pronounced "s" "z", written as a ligature of s & z, but when unavailable, is replaced in Latin text with "ss".
Pendantic, but: ß is not a ligature of s and z, but of the long s (ſ) and the tailed s (ʒ)[0], hence why when capitalized it is replaced with the double S. (Although there has been a more contemporary innovation of a "capital ß", not without controversy.)
I have always considered the long s in German, English and Greek to simply be a variant form of "s" given that the two are otherwise utterly equivalent.
As for ʒ, it is literally a tailed z, not s, as even your link says.
> Weirdly, ß is pronounced "s" "z", written as a ligature of s & z, but when unavailable, is replaced in Latin text with "ss".
Not quite: ß is nearly always a lowercase-only letter, and it is capitalized to SS even in German text, where they have all the German letters. A capital ẞ exists but is vanishingly rare:
https://www.thelocal.de/20170711/after-a-century-of-dispute-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9F
Example of capital ẞ from 1957 in German text:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eszett_Leipziger_Duden_19...
The character ß is called "scharfes S" or "eszett" which would translate to "ess zee" in American English.
On the use Fraktur in general: It really seems to have taken off in the second half of the 19th century. In the Biedermeier era (roughly equivalent to Regency) it's predominantly Latin writing, both in books and hand written documents. Interestingly, the use of Fraktur in the Nazi era was first discouraged in media targeting international audiences (Signal, etc), before it was banned domestically. (I have no idea, if there's a connection or if this was rather a matter of the whims of the factions in charge, as in "Führerprinzip". The latter was really a stand-in for chaos and divide et impera, as there would have been always parallel organisational strains, fighting for the favor of the next level in the hierarchy.)
Generally, regarding the aesthetics of the regime, the party line favored the plain, straight, ortholinear as opposed to skewed aspects or the overly ornamental. However, this was subject to favorism and various factions in the regime. (E.g., while the (in)famous shots of Leni Riefenstahl's films would have been in violation of these aesthetic principles and thus should have been deemed "undeutsch", these became pretty much the show case of the regime.) Again, I'm not sure, if there's a connection, but it may provide a hint for why Fraktur fell out of fashion with the regime.
Regarding the "ß" ligature, this predates Fraktur and wasn't specific to German writing. (E.g., there are 15th century Italian examples.)
Those two statements are compatible with each other, since hitler rose to power in 1933.
This overstates it - the regime transitioned to the type used extensively in the lands it had just conquered ("certificates and appointments for officials" per the Bormann memo), and printers were free to use fraktur. The statement you respond to is correct, as the order in fact solidified fraktur as totally a Nazi face. It's worth noting that the idea was rooted in the sort of "Soros-funded DA" politically messaging that was so absurd it could only be effective in that sort of regime, anyway.