Welcome!

My name is Arin Dachner. I’d like to offer to transcribe your old, handwritten German documents into modern script and translate them for you into English. I also offer genealogical research and advisory services. (Please don’t be confused if you are still used to my old site. I officially changed my first name in early 2025.)

Until the first part of the 20th century, a handwriting was used in Germany that looks very different from today’s cursive. This Kurrent script, and later the Sütterlin script, was used for hundreds of years in everyday life, so we can find it on all kinds of old documents – on birth certificates, post cards, church records, love letters, last wills, official letters…

Part of a letter in old German script

Family research

Perhaps you are interested in your family’s history and now wonder what these hundred-year-old letters you found on your grandparent’s attic are about. Or you have some documents from archives, or want to find out more about your family tree.

Academical research

Maybe you are working on an academic paper in music or art history. During your research, you came across an artist’s interesting manuscripts in old German script. Unfortunately you can’t read them.

Legal research

Or you were asked to clarify the history of ownership of a building. But you are at a loss when looking at an age-old German land register entry.

In any of these cases I can help you. I made my passion for old scripts into a profession and specialized on transcribing and translating Sütterlin and Kurrent script. Another thing I can help with is researching in archives and putting family trees together.

Gladly I will enable you to discover the secrets of these old German documents.

A white person with curly brown hair and glasses is sitting at a wooden desk and smiles right at the camera. A noteblock and several old documents are lying in front of here. There are also some books and a laptop on the table.

You may ask yourself: “But can’t AI translate these texts now?”

Yes and no (or “Jein”, as we say in German). There is at least one AI specialized on transcribing handwritten German documents. I tested the free version of it, and it turned out that it still makes many errors.

So at least for now, I can claim that my work is by far more accurate. Also, the AI won’t provide you with any historical or cultural context, and it won’t find out the modern spelling of your ancestor’s village either.

However, if you decide to let an AI transcribe a handwritten document, make sure it’s an AI that has been specifically trained for that purpose. Do not use a chatbot like Gemini or ChatGPT – they simply can’t read Kurrent script, even though they might pretend they can.