Old Printing Block

Bought this old printing block. Pressed out on cardboard so I could read it. But I don't know what it says.

 

Thanks more, not sure if it is old english or something else.

 

It's not Old English. That was gone by the 13th century, long before the printing press.

Debora

 

German in the old script.

 

Thank you Bakers

 

The larger text may translate to Church and School.

 

Roaring there is a church in the picture and a building with a flag.

 

It's all a Fraktur type style. The small text at the top is tough to read. It looks like "Ameritas Wehftnefdja" Beclitums

 

I think the top Says America (Amerikas) Weights Welcome
The curved word I am working on. last word I think is School (skola)

 

Maybe Balance in school not sure

 

Church is Kirche in German. And I don't think that is the first word there... What were you seeing as that word?

The larger letters above "school" seem to spell Basniza, which is not a German word that I can tell. What is everybody else seeing? I'm using the "typeface samples" about halfway down this Wikipedia page to interpret. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur

 

I was getting a translation from Latvian or similar.

 

Is the color from the image right? Grey?
Then the date is about '30s and later. Before that the cliché's were more brown (more copper before that).
Perhaps you van find a newspaper ad on a newspaper website?

https://www.geheugenvantilburg.nl/page/10172/cliche-th-van-iersel-krant-advertentie-07-11-1911

Can show a later grey one myself at wish.

 

According to Google translate, "basniza un skola" in Romanian means "a school fairy tale". Here is a link to an old book with the same name, offered in Romanian site:
Basniza un skola : preekschlasijums Sinibu Komisijas wasaras sapulzēs 20. junijā 1907. g. | Europeana

Although it indeed refers to a Latvian source - National Library of Latvia, and that the book is in Latvian.
Google translate is awful when it comes to less common languages...

Interesting, basnya or basnja in Bulgarian means "fable". In Russian, too. Maybe from the same Slavic origin, although neither Romanian nor Latvian is Slavic. Or maybe old Latin origin as Latvian and Romanian are Romance languages (edit, my mistake, Latvian is Germanic, not Romance). No, not from Latin. So it should be from Slavic???

On top of that, Google translate claims that "basniza" in Czech means also "a fairy tale".

Seems that "basniza" in Latvian indeed means "church" so it should be read as "Church and school" in Latvian. From here 16799226.pdf (lndb.lv)
It is a book about the church in Umurga and on page 5 there is a picture of the Church in Umurga town, spelt in the same way as on the printing block.
Umurga Church - visitLimbazi.lv

 

Agree. Thanks for the link, Iva. The Latvian title is:

Basniza un skola : preekschlasijums Sinibu Komisijas wasaras sapulzēs 20. junijā 1907. g.

Lingva Translate says it means:

Basniza and school: pre-examination at the summer meetings of the Sinibu Commission on June 20, 1907.

I also found this:
https://www.reinisfischer.com/saka-baptist-church
Where it is thought that Basniza is an older version of the present day Latvian word Baznīca, which means church. Maybe that word is still used by some Lutheran churches?

Anyway, the translation of "Basniza" and "Skola" is Church (older spelling?) and School.

 

Thanks, Any, for the links, agree, it also occurred to me that most probably these are two spellings of the same word.
And my mistake, Latvian is Germanic not Romance.
My hypothesis is that the block was used by a school at a Lutheran church in Latvia to put stamps on their documents.

 

It is not Germanic either. Latvian is a Baltic language, more precisely East Baltic. As such it is more closely related to Slavic languages (common Balto-Slavic roots), than to other Indo-European languages.
There was a strong German cultural influence through Lutheran ministers (priests), which could possibly account for the use of Fraktur print on the block.

On the use of Fraktur in Latvia:

"In the Latvian variant of Fraktur, used mainly until the 1920s,..."

"a wide variety of Fraktur fonts were carved and became common in the German-speaking world and areas under German influence (Scandinavia, Estonia, Latvia, Central Europe)."

"Typesetting in Fraktur was still very common in the early 20th century in all German-speaking countries and areas, as well as in Norway, Estonia, and Latvia,...."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur

So according to the article, it was mainly used until the 1920s. 'Mainly' could mean that there could have been Fraktur script users a few years later. But it could indicate an approximate end date for the block.

Possibly a header for publications?

 

Thanks, Any! This can explain the Slavic origin of the word "church" in Latvian meaning "a place where fables or fairy tales are told"
I have some contacts form Latvia and their language does not seem close to the Slavic ones I have some knowledge of. I can understand quite a bit in Slovakian and Slovenian, also in Polish and Czech but nothing in Latvian. I don't speak German but it has always sounded to me somewhat German-ish. But the linguists should know better, I guess
B.t.w. the younger generations here do not understand any Russian. It is quite different grammatically from Bulgarian and even the words of common root are not discernible to them because these words are almost always inflected.
I was surprised to learn a while ago that according to linguists there is the group of Balkan languages that share similarities, which for me is non-sense as I cannot see anything similar between Bulgarian and Greek.

 

Yes, quite plausible.