Graphology Old and New. Today sciencific graphology is a good thirty years old. I
With certa in reser vations, it can undoubtedly be described as a German ...
Graphology Old and New . 39~
Graphology Old and New
Today sciencific graphology is a good thirty yea rs old. I With certa in reser vations, it can un doubtedly be descri bed as a German achievement; and 1897, when the German Gra phological Society was fo unded in M unich, can be deemed the year of its birth. It is a striking fact that academjc sc ience still withholds recognition, even though this technique has been providing p~s of the precision of its principles for the past three decades. To th is ay, no 'German LUliversity has establi shed_a_chair for the interpretation of handwriting. But it is worthy of nofe that one of die free coUeges, the tessmg:Hochschu le in Berlin, has now taken the step of ad opti ng the Central Institute for Scientific Graphology (under the direction of Anja Men delssohn ). Eviden tly this fact has a lso been acknowledged a broad as a mi lestone in the history of graphology. At a ny rate, th e oldest living rep re sentati ve of this science, Jules Cn' pieux-Jarnin, arri ved from Rouen to attend the opening of the institute. 2 We foun d him to be an elder ly, somewhat unworldly gentleman w ho at first glance looked like a doctor. An important practical doctor, that is, rather than a pioneering researchcL And this would also be an apt desc ription of Crepieux-Ja min and his disciples' position in graph ology. He inherited the mantle of bis teacher, Mich on, w ho in 1872 had published his Geheimnis der Handschrift lSecret of H andwriting!, in which the concept of graphology appears fOf the first time. J What teacher and pupil have in common is a sharp eye for handwriting and a large dose of healthy common sense, in conju nction with a gift for inge nious inference. All of this shows to advantage in their analyses, which for theif part do more to satisfy the require ments of practical life than those of a science of character. The demands of the latter were first articulated by Ludwig Klages in his fundam ental works Prinzipien de,. Charakterologie [The Principles of Characterology] and Hands chrift lmd Charakter lHandw riting and Char-
acterV Klages takes aim at the so-ca lled sign theory of the French school whose proponents linked qualities of character to quite specific written signs that they used as stereotypes on which to construct their interpretations. In contrast, Klages inter prets handwriting basically as gesture, as expressive movement. 10 his writings, there is no talk of spec ific signs; he speaks only of the general characteristics of wri ting, which are not restricted to the particular form of individua l letters. A special role is assigned to the analysis of the so-called for mal level-a mode of interpretation in which all the characteristic features of a specimen of handwritin g are susceptible to a dual evaluation--either a positive or a negative interpretation- and where it is th e formaJ level of the script that decides wh ich of the two evaluations should be a pplied in each case . The history of modern Germ an graphology can be defin ed essentially by the debates surroundi.ng Klages' tlleories. These debates have been initiated at two focal points. Ro bert Saudek criticized the lack of prec ision in Klages' findings concernin g the physiological features of handwriting, as well as hi
