Palaeography

The word this whole field rests on leads a second life in the newspaper. Die Handschrift is somebody’s handwriting and, in a library, a manuscript: a book written by hand. Out of the first sense German has made a fixed phrase, etwas trägt jemandes Handschrift: a reform, a production or a building bears the unmistakable mark of the person behind it. Das Programm trägt deutlich die Handschrift der neuen Intendantin. English reaches for fingerprints or a signature; German keeps the pen. The verb is nearly always tragen, often with deutlich or unverkennbar beside it, and the phrase judges nothing by itself — it only says whose work this is. Said of an artist, eine eigene Handschrift haben means a style of their own. Palaeography is the literal version of the same idea: a hand that can be recognised, and therefore placed and dated.