Ilse Wendland

Ilse Wendland is 38 and a paleographerpaleographer Scholar who reads and dates old handwriting and scripts, especially medieval and early modern manuscripts., the specialist who transcribes the Gothic scriptGothic script Angular German style of handwriting and printing, widely used until the 1940s and hard to read today. of the notebooks. Thin, with a narrow, pale face, short brown hair with straight bangs and large thin gold-rimmed glasses, she is precise and reserved, ironic with the men who run the project and tired of working locked in a windowless room.

She lives alone in a two-room apartment in Hamburg, on the third floor of a brick building, its walls covered with shelves of dictionaries and old glossaries, a plain desk with an articulated-arm lamp, a fern in the window and an electric kettle. On rainy days, which are nearly all of them, she works with the lights low and the radio on.

She wears a gray turtleneck sweater, a knee-length plaid skirt and, hanging from her neck on a cord, a magnifying glass that she uses even to read menus. She walks fast, head down, and speaks little. When someone raises their voice at her, she answers lower still, and those who know her know it is in that tone that she is most dangerous. She likes strong coffee, silence and people who finish their sentences.

About the project, her account is brief: she converts Gothic scriptGothic script Angular German style of handwriting and printing, widely used until the 1940s and hard to read today. into today's writing, page by page, locked in that room. Nobody outside knows what she does, not even her sister. She signed a paper that forbids her even to dream about it, and says so with a corner-of-the-mouth smile that is barely visible.

When the question suggests she helped forge the diaries, Ilse answers that she was the one who switched on the light, and that she would not have done so if she wanted to protect anything. She asks that the question be asked again with more care, softly, and the low tone says more than the sentence: the firmness of someone who blew the whistle or the coldness of someone who measures what she reveals?