Hannah Boeddeker Successfully Defends Her PhD Dissertation

23 July 2024

Photo: CSMC

Congratulations to Hannah Boeddeker, for defending her PhD dissertation on the history of parliamentary shorthand writing! The viva voce examination took place on 17 July.

Hannah Boeddeker has passed her viva and thus completed her PhD project in History. Her dissertation, which was supervised by Markus Friedrich, deals with Parliamentary Shorthand Writing as Material and Political Practice.

The middle of the 19th century saw the rise of parliamentarianism in Germany. This development was accompanied by the rapid spread of a specific form of written artefacts: manuscripts in shorthand, which recorded what was said during parliamentary debates. This new practice raised a number of much-discussed questions: Was publishing the oral debates the best way to hold parliaments accountable to the public? Did everything really have to be recorded? Could a stenographic transcript be trusted at all?

The dissertation investigates the material cultural and political impact of shorthand manuscript cultures in Germany over a hundred years, from 1815 to 1918. For that purpose, it examines the remaining parliamentary shorthand notes as well as the procedure right up to the finished print. A comparison of the different stages of parliamentary manuscripts from shorthand to longhand to the printed version highlights the various settings, actors, materialities, and practices involved. The study of these written artefacts thus yields a deeper understanding of the connection between politics, publicity, and handwriting in the 19th and early 20th century.