Paper: Materials, Working Practices, and Formats of the Humanities

This subproject investigates what has historically been the most important working medium of the humanities: paper. The invention of groundwood paper in 1843, new practices for producing cellulose, and the energy of the paper machine and steam engine led to the industrialization of the paper industry. The resulting “paper flood,” made up of affordable, mass-produced groundwood and straw pulp paper as well as new, refined types of paper, radically changed the work of humanities scholars.
 
Focusing on the case of the humanities in Berlin, the project aims to reconstruct the ways in which new material preconditions encouraged new publication formats and working practices. In the 19th century, scholars initiated long-term editorial projects that were based on the availability of large amounts of paper in different types. Around 1900, libraries and new archives tested methods of conserving paper. Different disciplines used the diversity of available papers to transfer knowledge in academia and the public sphere. During times of war and paper shortage, new strategies to save paper were invented to enable continued study.
 
Intertwined with the national paper industry, which drew wood resources from forests in Germany, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe, these activities came together in Greater Berlin as a center of humanities, media corporations, paper industry, and paper testing. Because of the geographical scale of the scholarly work studied, my project’s focus can be extended to international paper industries. Attention to the use of special types of paper and the paper industry in wartime broadens the spectrum of raw materials and their provenances examined in the project as a whole.