A 700-year-old notebook found in a toilet in Paderborn, Germany

Source trail

Claim → sources → boundary

Official account

LWL

The notebook preserves Latin writing, including individual recognisable words. But LWL's announcement supplies no complete transcription or translation.

Materials

Leather, wood and wax

This object used wax-filled wooden writing surfaces, bound and protected by leather.

Ownership

A possibility, not an identification

Neither the owner nor the circumstances of its loss are established.

A small book arrived at a conservation workshop wrapped in a wet clump of earth. It had been recovered from a medieval latrine during construction work in Paderborn, Germany. Cleaning revealed leather, wood and wax, with writing still on the inner surfaces. The LWL account of the discovery describes the object behind the “700-year-old notebook” headlines: a reusable writing book dated to the thirteenth through the end of the fourteenth century.

The notebook preserves Latin writing, including individual recognisable words. But LWL's announcement supplies no complete transcription or translation. It describes a commissioned transcription, with translation into German to follow. The condition of the wax explains why the marks survived; understanding the handwriting and separating successive layers of text are further tasks.

Source trail at a glance

LWL's original URL currently opens a maintenance page. The links here therefore use the City of Paderborn's official republication of the LWL account, not an independent study.

The starting record is “Seltener Fund in Paderborn,” from the Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe, or LWL. It describes the excavation context and quotes archaeologist Sveva Gai and conservator Susanne Bretzel about the find. Their observations cover the book's materials, preservation and writing, while their suggestions about its owner remain tentative.

The Paderborn notebook source guide links the official report and provides searches for later conservation or transcription records. A later account needs to identify new text work before it can establish more than the original announcement.

What was the 700-year-old notebook made of?

“Notebook” can suggest paper pages and ink. This object used wax-filled wooden writing surfaces, bound and protected by leather. The LWL description gives the leather cover's dimensions as 10 by 7.5 centimetres and the wood's as 8.6 by 5.5 centimetres. It also describes a small leather pouch with a flap.

Bretzel explains how a stylus worked: its pointed end scratched letters into wax, while its flat or spatula-shaped end could smooth the surface to erase them. A writer could therefore use the same surface again rather than needing another page for every note.

That reuse complicates reading this particular book. LWL reports both the latest writing and visible traces of an older, erased text. The marks need to be distinguished before they can be treated as a continuous passage. Researchers must work out which strokes belong together, as well as what the words say.

The leather has details of its own. According to Gai's description, regular rows of small lilies were impressed across the cover. The leather binding survived, although the threads had come loose. Gai suggests the decoration might eventually help establish the object's origin or place of manufacture; the announcement does not name a workshop.

Why did it survive in a toilet?

The conservation account attributes the preservation to wet, airtight conditions in the soil. Bretzel reports that the inner surfaces sat so tightly together that dirt had not entered. She needed to clean the outside, while the wood had not warped and the wax remained intact.

The book's closed surfaces and stable wooden supports help explain why writing survived in a place associated with waste. This was not a case of reconstructing a text from a few scattered fragments: the conservator could examine wax still held in the book's wooden leaves.

LWL places the find within excavations for Paderborn's new city administration building. Five latrines were identified, and the notebook came from one alongside other medieval objects, including barrels, pottery and basketry remains. Gai says these associated finds support the book's dating.

The release also points to the Latin and cursive letter forms in assigning the book to the thirteenth through late fourteenth centuries. “700-year-old” is a rounded description, not an exact year of manufacture or disposal. LWL uses roughly 700 to 800 years.

Can researchers read what it says?

The release describes the script as well preserved and legible, yet also says deciphering it is difficult even for specialists. These statements concern different problems. A clearly surviving mark can still be hard to interpret as part of handwriting, especially where spelling is irregular or older writing remains beneath it.

LWL specifically raises possible incorrect spellings as a complication. It also discusses the potential use of technical methods to separate related layers of writing. That is a proposed approach, not a report that every layer has already been separated and read.

Transcription means identifying and recording the handwritten text in readable form. Translation then turns that reading from Latin into another language. A complete edition would let readers see which passages had been transcribed, where readings were uncertain and how a translation related to the surviving marks.

The announcement gives no diary entries or named trading partners. Its account of recognisable words supports the prospect of learning more, but does not yet tell us what the whole book contains. A later textual publication, rather than another description of preservation, is the record needed to answer that question.

Was it a merchant's book, dropped by accident?

Gai proposes in the LWL announcement that a Paderborn merchant may have used the book to jot down business matters and thoughts. She also suggests it could have fallen into the latrine by accident. Neither the owner nor the circumstances of its loss are established.

The writing runs in two directions, depending on how the book was held, and appears to come from one hand. Gai connects this with spontaneous note-taking. The decorated cover and Latin writing also inform LWL's discussion of a possible owner from a higher social stratum.

Identifying a person would require more than those features. The announcement describes a possible route through the excavation context: assigning the latrine to a particular property, then searching archives for its residents. Even a property connection would need to be assessed alongside the object, rather than automatically identifying whoever lived there as its writer.

What conservation and display plans did LWL describe?

The institutional report lists questions about the wax or resin mixture, possible pigments, melting point and wood species. Answers would guide treatment of the different materials. The text presents these as investigations, not completed material-analysis results.

Bretzel said the leather and wood would remain in regularly renewed distilled water while the team awaited results. She estimated that the full conservation process could take up to a year. LWL also described an intended later display at the museum in the Kaiserpfalz in Paderborn.

Those plans describe the project when the announcement was issued. They do not establish that conservation is still underway or that the notebook is on public display now. Anyone planning a visit needs a current museum listing that explicitly includes it.

The book preserves evidence of writing and rewriting on a small, portable object. Its wax may retain notes the writer meant to keep alongside traces they intended to erase. A transcription that separates those layers could tell us much more about its use than the fact that it survived in a latrine.

Sources

• LWL, “Seltener Fund in Paderborn: LWL-Archäologie präsentiert gut erhaltenes mittelalterliches Notizbuch”. Official German announcement with excavation context, conservation observations and the stated transcription plan.