I recently found an old letter from my grandpa to my grandma during the war in Old German handwriting. A lot of spikes. Decided to learn to read it. Nice journey, I recommend. (Not necessarily old GERMAN handwriting, but, you now, old handwriting in your mother tongue).
that's because they are, umlauts came from writing vowel digraphs as the first letter with the second letter above it, for example ueber/veber -> uอคber/vอคber -> รผber/vฬber -> รผber (although รผber in particular didn't actually originally have the spelling ueber). "e" turned into two lines, which now is represented as two dots/a diaeresis on most computer fonts. that's why, if you don't have access to diacritics (e.g. on technology), you write รค/รถ/รผ like ae/oe/ue (and why you have names which are spelled like Goethe instead of Gรถthe)
For the longest time I was confused when seeing Americans talk about cursive, because I thought they meant italic print. What they call cursive is just handwriting to me.