It's the cursive version of Fraktur. Learning to read the printed version is fairly easy - spend a day reading stuff and you get used to it, sort of. The handwritten stuff on the other hand. Christ. There's even a special two week intensive course for grad students at some college in Pennsylvania that people go to before they hit the archives - otherwise they're just lost. I remember trying to read the letters of a prominent Ostforscher a couple years ago while going through various Nachlaesse - they might have had interesting stuff but how am I supposed to know? Spent a day, gave up. Photocopied them and I've looked at the stuff a few more times, still can't get anywhere.