The Matter of Writing

30 April 2025, 5:00 pm

Photo: CSMC

How has the significance of handwriting changed in the digital age? In particular, who uses notebooks today, for what purposes, and what can we learn from studying them? These questions were discussed by researchers from the CSMC and representatives of the Hamburg-based company Leuchtturm1917 during an evening event.

Notebooks give us raw insights into the thought processes of other people, including all their twists and turns, dead ends, new approaches, and breakthroughs. This makes them of particular value to historians of science, for example, who are interested not only in consequential ideas themselves, but in their development. Even today, despite the ubiquity of digital media, many people still enjoy working with notebooks; however, their functions and status have changed significantly compared to the pre-digital era. On 30 April 2025, the event ‘Die Materie des Schreibens’ (‘The Matter of Writing’) focused on the special value of notebooks for research and their status in today’s digital age. In the atrium of the SUB, Matthias Schemmel, who is part of the ‘Keeping Note(book)s’ research field (RFG) at the the CSMC, Konrad Hirschler, director of the CSMC, and Philip Döbler, Managing Director of Leuchtturm1917, a Hamburg-based company known for its high-quality notebooks, discussed this topic together.

The evening was organised by Universitätsgesellschaft Hamburg (UGH). It marked the start of ‘Exzellenz erleben’ (‘Experience Excellence’), a series of events which showcase Hamburg’s Clusters of Excellence and bring them into dialogue with regional companies. In addition to the keynote speeches and the panel discussion, the event also offered the opportunity to view particularly noteworthy manuscripts from the holdings of the SUB, which were investigated by CSMC researchers and were part of the exhibition on ‘Hamburgs Schriftschätze’ (‘Written Treasures of Hamburg’) in 2023, and to glance into the work of the CSMC’s Artefact Lab.