What do you think of when you hear the word filler? I think of the ink stains, of the index and middle fingers cramped from the unfamiliar writing position, and of the edge of the hand with which the writing was smeared. Of the smell of inkkiller that was used to try to get rid of it. And the little transparent beads.
Anyone who knows them belongs to the Pelican faction. At Pelikan, the beads sealed the ink cartridges and you could squeeze them out of the empty cartridge at the end. And collect them because they were pretty. Play with it when class was boring. Or use them as ammunition in sawn-off and empty felt-tip pens that acted as spit tubes.
The balls were the decisive argument for Pelikan fillers. The unfortunate people who wrote with Geha didn’t have that. Nobody can understand how this brand war – Pelikan versus Geha – found its way into classrooms. But anyone who went to school in the 60s, 70s or 80s knows this.
In retrospect, it seems like one of those psychological experiments in which you dress children in different colored shirts, let the blue ones compete against the green ones, and see how an in-group and out-group understanding is formed in record time, in which you invent a million reasons why your own group is always nicer, smarter and better and the other is somehow strange and stupid.
The peculiarity
Learning to write in elementary school is a hotly contested field. Here everyone has something to say and something to fear. Sometimes a historical perspective helps to gain a little distance from the culture war.
The target group
Nostalgics, architecture lovers and anyone interested in cultural and economic history. Or people who would like to chat about their school experiences across generations.
Obstacles on the way
The factory sales and the exhibition are accessible at different times than the tours of the historic factory premises. Combining these requires a bit of skill. Dates can be found on hannover.de and pelikan.com.
The funny thing is that behind this War of the Blobs there is also a crazy piece of cultural, industrial and urban history, much of which takes place in Hanover.
The company headquarters and factory premises of Pelikan and Geha were at times only a few blocks away from each other. Even today, the Pelikanviertel and the Gehacarré bear witness to how important they once were in the city.
A classic Wilhelminian era child
However, Pelikan is older. A classic Wilhelminian era child who achieved breathtaking growth, from an ink and artist’s paint producer to an office supplies manufacturer. With this kind of upper-middle-class, patriarchal understanding that has long since died out: people collected art and built factory apartments, tied up the laboriously trained skilled workers with lavish social benefits, and some remained “Pelicans” for generations.
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You can still see a little bit of it today. The factory premises have now become a chic quarter with hotels, restaurants, apartments and offices. There are guided tours that give you an idea of what used to happen here.
And there is the “Ink Tower”. Pelikan has a showroom with a factory outlet here and next door in the old ballroom there are changing exhibitions with exhibits from the company archive.
The Pelikan board met in the hall, the field staff met, but also the “Writing Education Working Group”. The current exhibition “Goose feather, pelicano, keyboard(until June), which was created in collaboration with the Hanover Historical Museum.
The spelling drill was also a disciplinary instrument, more subjugation than enlightenment.
Early on, Pelikan not only supplied paints and ink, but also educational materials. This intensified with the Pelikano school pen, which came onto the market in the 1960s – and was considered a sensation in schools because it worked with cartridges and thus eliminated the need to knock over ink bottles.
The exhibition makes it easy to see how learning to write has always been a field in which culture wars have been fought – and not just since the ongoing discussions about for which you actually need cursive writing. On the one hand, it was a huge step forward: with compulsory schooling, cultural technology that was originally reserved for a few became accessible to the general population. At the same time – as the writing learning books on display here testify – the drill for beautiful writing was also a disciplinary instrument, more subjugation than enlightenment.
Invitation to a nostalgia trip
If you like, you can also simply go on a nostalgia trip in this exhibition, try out how difficult it is to write with a goose quill, have fun with old commercials or marvel at the expensive collector’s items that Pelikan still produces.
The company itself has long since fallen victim to globalization and actually only exists as a brand in an international company conglomerate that is difficult to understand. As early as 1996, a Malaysian company took over the majority of shares in Pelikan AG. Before that – in 1990 – the company had bought out its decades-long competitor Geha. At least this brand war was decided once and for all.