How it works
AI trained on millions of handwritten pages
Transkribus uses artificial intelligence trained on more than 30 million words from historical documents. The AI recognizes the distinctive rounded letterforms of Sütterlin script – analyzing each stroke and converting your document line by line into readable digital text.
Reads Sütterlin, Kurrent, and other old German cursive scripts
300+ public models for different handwriting styles and time periods
Works with phone photos or high-resolution scans
Genealogy & research
Decode your grandparents' Sütterlin letters
Sütterlin was the standard school handwriting in Germany from 1915 to 1941. If you're researching family history from the early 20th century, most personal documents – letters, postcards, diaries – will be written in Sütterlin. Transkribus decodes them automatically.
Family letters and personal correspondence from the 1910s–1940s
Church records: baptisms, marriages, and death certificates
School reports, certificates, and official forms
Diaries, postcards, and wartime letters (Feldpost)
Beyond the demo
The full platform for historical documents
The demo above gives you a taste. The full Transkribus platform lets you process thousands of pages, train custom AI models on your specific handwriting, search across all your documents, and export in any format you need.
Train custom models on your family's specific handwriting
Full-text search across all your transcribed documents
Export as TXT, DOCX, PDF, TEI-XML, or PAGE XML
Collaborate with family members and share collections
What you can transcribe
Common documents written in Sütterlin
Sütterlin was taught in German schools from 1915 and remained in everyday use until 1941. Documents from this period – whether private or official – are almost always written in Sütterlin handwriting.
Personal letters, postcards, and family correspondence
Kirchenbücher (church books) with vital records
School notebooks, report cards, and certificates
Administrative forms, applications, and permits
Wartime letters (Feldpost) from World War I and II
Diaries, recipe books, and personal journals
Background
What is Sütterlin?
Sütterlin is a simplified form of the older German Kurrent script. It was designed by the Berlin graphic artist Ludwig Sütterlin in 1911 and introduced as the standard school handwriting in Prussia in 1915, later adopted across Germany. Its rounded, upright letterforms were intended to be easier to learn than the angular Kurrent. In 1941, the Nazi regime abolished all German cursive scripts in favor of Latin handwriting.
Designed by Ludwig Sütterlin in 1911 as a modernized German script
Standard school handwriting in Germany from 1915 to 1941
More rounded and upright than the older Kurrent script
Abolished in 1941 along with all German cursive scripts
Still found in millions of unread personal and official documents
The technology
How does Sütterlin handwriting recognition work?
Handwriting recognition (HTR – Handwritten Text Recognition) uses deep learning neural networks to convert images of handwritten text into machine-readable characters. Unlike OCR for printed text, HTR must handle the infinite variation in human handwriting – different letter shapes, connected strokes, and personal styles.
Neural networks trained on millions of handwritten samples
Layout analysis detects lines and text regions automatically
Character-level recognition handles connected and cursive writing
Language models improve accuracy by understanding word context
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200M+Pages processed
500K+Users worldwide
300+Public AI models