Article:

Für, mit und auf Papier Papiertechnologien und ihre Versorgungsketten

This contribution recasts the term "paper technologies" by attending to the production, use, repurposing, and reuse of various paper materials. Introducing two detailed case studies—the counting card used during the Prussian census of 1871 and World War II–era military mail from the Nazi correspondence school—we uncover production processes, trade routes, and material knowledge associated with paper. Our contribution reveals significant social, economic, and political contexts associated with knowledge practices. Taken together, our exploration of paper technologies via paper’s detailed supply chains makes visible what happens on, with, and especially for paper in order for this oft-ignored substrate to function as a medium of knowledge.