Seal
A seal (the seal, incorrectly also the seal) is a stamp made of a hard material that is suitable for pressing a seal into a sealing compound ( sealing wax , etc.). To make one used to be a job of its own, the petscher . Provided with a handle, a seal is also known as a seal stick .
The seal is to be distinguished from conventional (sealing) punches for paper carrying the seal on a rubber-like surface on a stamping pad is wetted with ink. Then such a stamp is pressed onto the paper and leaves an image of the seal there.
use
There is no stamp pad when using a seal. A seal is made of a hard material with a seal engraved on it. It is pressed into a (previously applied) soft mass (wax, warm sealing wax, etc.) and leaves a - usually raised - impression of the seal. This can be done like a stamp in order to seal a document and thus guarantee its authenticity (ultimately via the recognized position of the person who seals it); However, lacquer seals in particular were and are often used for closing in order to prevent unauthorized opening of confidential documents (letters, documents).
Seals are mainly used today in areas with strong secrecy protection, especially in the military sector. Frequently as the sealing mass is today the use of a signet with a seal pot: An closable storage locations, such as steel cabinet or steel cassette is on one side of the opening gap, a metal pot with 3 welded on the door gap and the lid opening to 4 cm diameter in which a soft be kneaded is . A chain, thread or a second metal pot is welded onto the other side of the opening gap. A chain is now pushed into the pots over the opening or the opening gap and covered with the modeling clay. Then the seal is pressed into the modeling clay so that an image emerges. In this way it can be determined who last locked the metal cabinet or the metal cassette (and opened it before). A seal usually only contains a short description of the authority and a registration number in the seal image. With the help of this information, the bearer of the seal can be clearly identified and whether he was authorized to open the sealed area.
While a key for a cabinet or a cassette can be passed on or reproduced, the seal is assigned to a specific person and must not be given out of hand. Often a modern seal has only a very short handle that just fits between two fingertips. Often the handle is provided with a hole to attach the seal to the key ring.
Word meaning
The term seal itself is a loan word from Slavic. The word petschat already appears in Middle High German. In the following years, the term changed in volksetymologischer based on the German Wortbildungsmorphem -schaft . Early evidence from the southern German-speaking area could indicate that it could be a borrowing from Old Slovene or Old Czech pečat (meaning seal ). Pfeiffer states that the term may have been spread through its use in the Prague office . In many Slavic languages there are sometimes very similar words; for example, Slovak pečať (German seal ) or pečiatka (German stamp ) and Russian печать (German stamp). In Hungarian , too , the term was borrowed from the Slavic languages ( pecsét ).
photos
Box with sealing wax in different colors and seal, MEK
Paperweight and seal, in the holdings of the MEK
Collections
- The Museum of Life Traces in Wels holds seals of historical personalities, such as Gustav Klimt and Ludwig XIV , and in 2008/2009 showed new acquisitions in the exhibition Fascination Siegel .
- The Kestner Museum in Hanover has a collection of seal stamps.
- The Koenraad Bosman Museum in Rees on the Lower Rhine has a late medieval collection of seals.
See also
literature
Fiction
- The seal. An adventurous story . Publishing house Johann Ludwig Zessler, Frankfurt / M. 1797/1800 (3 volumes).
Non-fiction
- Christoph Battenberg: The collection of the seal stamp in the Kestner Museum Hanover . Hanover 1985, ISBN 3-924029-05-9 .
- Dagmar Blaha: Development of the seal and seal collections for historical research . In: Archives in Thuringia , Volume 2003, pp. 15–23.
Web links
- Seal archive
- 360 ° view of the seal of the blacksmiths in Stargard from 1714. Virtual State Museum Mecklenburg
Individual evidence
- ^ Günther Drosdowski : Duden , Volume 7: Etymology. Dictionary of origin of the German language . 2nd Edition. Dudenverlag, Mannheim 1989, p. 522, ISBN 3-411-20907-0 .
- ↑ seal. In: Digital dictionary of the German language . Retrieved October 26, 2019
- ↑ Archived copy ( memento from January 23, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Fascination Siegel - special exhibition, new acquisitions by a passionate collector, life traces museum> Archive> Special exhibitions, Wels, March 2008 - July 2009, accessed January 23, 2016.
- ^ Kestner Museum: The collection of the seal stamp in the Kestner Museum Hanover. Collection catalog, 1985, 204 pages, ISBN 978-3-924029-05-0 .