Deutsche Einheitskurzschrift

Deutsche Einheitskurzschrift (“DEK”, German Unified Shorthand) is a German stenography system. DEK is the official shorthand system in Germany and Austria today. It is used for word-for-word recordings of debates in the Federal Parliament of Germany.

The original version of DEK was created by an expert committee in 1924, based on the ideas of earlier systems like those of Gabelsberger, Faulmann and Stolze-Schrey. Revised versions were introduced in 1936 and 1968.

The latest reform of the Einheitskurzschrift was concluded in Vienna in 1962 after many years of work and officially introduced into the German educational system in Mainz in 1968 by the German Kultusministerkonferenz (State Conference on Education) as the Wiener Urkunde (“Vienna Document”) titled Systemurkunde der Deutschen Einheitskurzschrift – Wiener Urkunde – vom 1. August 1968. This may be considered largely the brainchild of Georg Paucker, who (as representative of the German Confederation of Trade Unions) applied himself particularly to the reform negotiations regarding the Verkehrsschrift.

DEK is based on indirect indication of vowels. There are several graphemes for common consonant-sequences and for single consonants, too. Vowels are indicated through the positional relation of two following consonant-graphemes in the line-system. For instance ‘sch’ [ʃ] is represented by one grapheme. To write the word ‘sch-e-sch’, which is not an actual German word, one and another sch-grapheme is connected by a short line at the same height above the line. The ‘e’ is indicated by the short connection between them. Furthermore, not only the relation is relevant, but the line pressure, too. That is why DEK is designed for pencils. An ‘a’ would be indicated by a short connection and a heavier down-line of the following consonant-grapheme. Up-lines are not written with a heavy line for speed reasons. All in all, shorthand reduces words to syllables, where whole syllables are written at once.