No, it wouldn't be fraktur, as that's only the old German typeset used.
There is, however, an old German cursive alphabet, which is very hard to
decipher nowadays even to a native German.

I had to learn it once to decipher some 19th-century German inscriptions.
Unfortunately too many letters look just alike -- as I recall, the lowercase E
looked very like an N or an R, so a great many words turned into nothing but
what looked like mmmmmm or nnnnnn or rrrr. Handwritten Russian (which looks a
bit similar) has the same tendency. It helps to have some mnntal tnlnpathy
going.

There is a recent book called _Deciphering Handwriting in German Documents_, by
Roger P. Minert, that may be of some use, reviewed at
http://www.pgsa.org/bookrD.htm

I couldn't get www.ggrs.com/events/handouts/handout_script.pdf to load just
now, but it looked useful.

--Helen