Fancy a word of academic German today? #Schreibschulden - the texts you promised to send to someone but missed the deadlines, and apparently your growing overload of to do reviews, chapters and articles become part and argument of every academic conversation you have.
"Wie geht es Ihnen und den #Schreibschulden heute?" (Gehört auf einem deutschen Universitätsflur in einem Historischen Seminar).
"Ich kann leider keine Rezensionen mehr annehmen, meine #Schreibschulden verbieten es mir" (Höfliche und häufige Floskel in Emails).
"Meine #Schreibschulden erdrücken mich! Ich traue mich schon gar nicht mehr an den Schreibtisch" (Gehört auf einer Konferenz)
"#Schreibschulden sind blöd, ich will einen schönen Sommer haben" (Ehrlicher Versuch, weitere Zusagen abzulehnen und Urlaub zu machen).
"Hast Du noch #Schreibschulden, oder kannst Du endlich Dein neues Buch beginnen?" (Naive Nachfrage unter Post-Docs).
#Schreibschuldeninsolvenz - der Moment, wenn zugegeben wird, dass man den zugesagten Text nie und nimmer schreiben wird. Der letzte und befreiende Akt der #Schreibschulden-Dynamik.
Die #Schreibschuldscham. Das Schämen für die eigene Nichtleistung: nicht zu Schreiben und nicht zu Publizieren beschämt oft.
Wenn man ehrlich ist, ist das berufliche Leben als Post-Doc oder Professor nur knietief im #Schreibschulden-Dispo zu meistern. So viele Zusagen, so viel Publiziertes, so viele Projekte...
Und wer vor lauter #Schreibschulden gar nicht mehr zum Schreiben kommt, der füttert seinen Twitter-Account mit Texten. Warmschreiben und Gedankenvorformen als Therapie und Produktivitätsbeginn.
Die "Lange Nacht der #Schreibschulden" wäre eine logische Erweiterung der langen Nächte der Hausarbeiten für Studierende. Nur ist die "Lange Nacht der Schreibschulden" immer zu kurz.
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That's an early modern street seller, selling broadsides and printed paper crowns for christmas.
Step 1 of #PaperCrownsForChristmas
The street seller is a detail of a painting from Joos de Momper the Younger, a Flemish painter active in Antwerp between the late 16th century and the early 17th century. So the paper crowns were likely sold in Antwerp or nearby.
Step 2 of #PaperCrownsForChristmas
Mobile sellers of paper products, like newspapers, broadsides, pamphlets etc., were a thing in early modern Europe. In fact, they were almost everywhere. And paper crowns were seasonal extras.
Step 3 of #PaperCrownsForChristmas
More information on the small print (an etching!) with the letter receiving or sending young woman can be found here: bavarikon.de/object/bav:UBE….
The purpose of paper letters being sent within the Early Modern European territories from A to B seems to be clear - it was about communication. However, we shall not forget that especially private letters were among the most read, and re-read, texts.
Among the many reusages of paper in early modern Europe was certainly rereading letters. A short thread - using a 1780s painting from Marguerite Gérard - for those interested in #paperhistory and #bookhistory:
Step 1.
Let's start the look at rereading (and paper storing) practices of rich Europeans with details on the painting used. You see Marguerite Gérard's painting from c. 1785, nowadays in the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen - Neue Pinakothek München, sammlung.pinakothek.de/de/artwork/ApL…
Step 2.
Important paper letters were stored in tiny boxes - for rereading aloud and silently, alone and in company.
One way to sell news in early modern Europe: combine extraordinary topics that were published elsewhere before, and then republish them in a new pamphlet.
The selection and combination of three extraordinary topics was an easy task for an experienced publisher. To start with, you needed to buy and read other pamphlets or news prints of the time. Media echoes of interesting stoiries were omnipresent and easy to spot. Have a look:
The severe weather, with thunder, heavy rainings and lightning, was all over the German news in 1684. Even if you missed the news reports in newspapers, there were also extra pamphlets devoted to the topic available. Like this one:
Cartography was a paper art. The famous painting of late seventeenth-century from the Dutch Johannes Vermeer reflects some of these paper usages: "De geograaf" was a paper using man; early modern #cartography was a paper world of its own. A short thread for #paperhistory.
Let's start with the globe. European-produced globes came in many sizes and forms (such as terrestrial and celestial globes), but most of them were printed globes and had from the first half of the 16th century onward main paper features:
2/x
First paper step: Form two half-hemisphere shells from papier mâché (or thin board).
Second paper step: joining the two paper hemispheres together - by glueing or sewing. Then sealing the paper thing with more paper to form a - to be coated in plaster - paper ball. Et voila! 3/x
There is a paper story included into this famous German painting of 1830s from Carl Spitzweg. You may know the common interpretation of the Poor Poet (German: Der arme Poet): Attention to the material misery of most artists and their work!
Let's start a #paperhistory thread. 1/x
The painting came in three versions and the one remaining copy is nowadays in the Neue Pinakothek (Munich: pinakothek.de/kunst/meisterw…). Let's focus on the paper used and present in this imagined scene of a poor poet in his attic room in the 1830s. 2/x
Easy to spot in the room are a few big bound books. They may be bound in leather but they are printed upon paper, very likely before 1800. These are used books, old books, second hand books. Nota bene: The German antiquarian book trade developed in these days, #bookhistory. 3/x