For Katharina Lechner, every working day begins with a descent. She lives under the roof of an old building without a lift and works in a basement room in the backyard. There are many creaking steps to get from the very top to the very bottom. There in the basement, towards the front door, there is a sign mounted at an angle with the inscription: paper workshop. A hint that sounds like a handicraft room or workshops, but Katharina Lechner does not give any courses for creative people. She is not a teacher, but a bookbinder with a master’s certificate who opposes the industrialization of her branch.
When the 59-year-old unlocks her workshop in the morning, presses the light switch and the neon tubes flood the whitewashed basement with brightness, she often thinks: “Man, am I lucky.” That’s what she says during a visit to her workplace, on a day when it’s cold and gray outside and cozy and warm inside. There is a large screen on her desk between a thermos of tea and a coffee maker. Here she processes email inquiries and types her invoices. Otherwise she has little to do with the computer.
From her desk, she can overlook the long room and see everything she needs every day and what makes up her life. Lots of books, papers, pictures. There are also the machines and devices that help her with the manual work. A punch, for example, that drives accurate holes in cardboard. A press that holds glued items together until dry. Directly in front of her is a scary big red cutter that bookbinders call “paper scissors”. But they are not reminiscent of ordinary scissors. The blades here are arm-length and can cut poster-sized paper up to two millimeters thick. Behind these giant scissors, rolled-up fabrics, strips of leather and paper protrude from a shelf. Anything that doesn’t fit in here is in front of it or in the corners. rolls everywhere. Cardboard sheets of various sizes are leaning against the free walls. Some things are leftovers that could be used again at some point and are too good to be thrown away.
A look at the work table: Important utensils are pens, scissors and glue.
(Photo: Catherine Hess)
Katharina Lechner uses materials of all sizes, she binds books of all kinds. “I do everything from very small to very large,” she says. Leather-bound books with gold embossing, notebooks with a soft cover or illustrated books with a slipcase. She sticks colorful scraps of paper, which she particularly likes, on matchboxes. In general, she loves boxes even more than books, she says. Katharina Lechner asks every new customer who comes to see her in Maxvorstadt: “What purpose is the piece supposed to serve?” Good advice is part of the job. She puts all of her extraordinary friendliness into them, which can be felt with every contact with her – from the first call on. Only when it is clear what someone really wants does she get started. She says of her clients: “They want quality work, something that stands out from the ordinary.” She works a lot for architects, for artists, for doctoral students, for students who want to make something special out of their works. Something haptic.
Anyone who comes to Lechner’s paper workshop can expect discretion. Also the African king, for whom she once bound a guest book with blank pages, and the restaurants that commission their menus from her. She makes a maximum of 50 of something, but usually the number is much smaller.
The middle finger is the glue finger
When the order is clear and the paper has been printed, the work continues at a wide table that stands in a window alcove to the left of the front door. Two clip-on lamps, the spot aimed at the panel, provide additional light: Small scissors, countless pencils, tongs, spatulas, compasses, a thick pot of glue are waiting to be used. She rarely works with gloves and has to keep her fingers clean when she uses glue, says the bookbinder. She moves the glued material with just her middle finger. The middle finger is the glue finger. Around this table, Katharina Lechner has pinned photographs of people she thinks are “great” on the walls. They are all silent spectators at their silent work. A black-and-white picture of Bertolt Brecht hangs here, the actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, former chancellor Willy Brandt, the painter Helmut Rieger, who learned to be a printer as a young man, and many more.
When she sits, she looks at eye level into the friendly face of a man standing behind metal panels. The tape holding the photo to the wall has already yellowed. It is a picture from her younger years of her father, the steel sculptor Alf Lechner, who died in 2017. His daughter looks unmistakably like him. The mischievous eyes, the dominant nose, the smile, the striking stature, she got all of that from her father. She herself says that the best thing she learned from him was being able to see. “Looking closely, recognizing little things, that was also his strength.”
Pictures by Alf Lechner that his daughter stuck on cans.
(Photo: Catherine Hess)
It also has a lot to do with him that Katharina Lechner became a bookbinder. “With such a strong father, I could never have become an artist myself,” she says. Because of him, however, she had been familiar with creating things with her hands since childhood. She actually wanted to do an apprenticeship as a stonemason, but her father used a trick to dissuade her. “Stone is a stupid material, you only swallow dust,” he said to her and soon invited Michael Petzet home. At the time, the art historian was head of the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments and, over dinner, convinced the young woman of an apprenticeship as a bookbinder. He illustrated to her how she could then restore old books in the state library. She tried, but stated, “I’m not a fumbling, not a preserver. I’m an inventor.” She also doesn’t like being told what to do, she says. That’s why she started her own business in 1991 after four years as a journeyman and the master craftsman’s examination. “Being independent, I got that from my father.”
Four journeyman years after the apprenticeship, then Katharina Lecher did her master’s examination.
(Photo: Catherine Hess)
Having to make a living from your job is no picnic, says Katharina Lechner. You have to work a lot for little money. “But it’s great fun.” She is married, has a grown daughter and does not have to fend for herself.
Almost every week she receives inquiries from young people who want to do an internship with her and get a taste of the craft. “But that’s not possible,” says Katharina Lechner. She doesn’t say that unkindly, but it’s just too small here for two. Maybe she just doesn’t want to share her little kingdom with anyone. Behind her desk is a postcard with a saying by Oscar Wilde: “Genius is born – not paid”. A long-time customer sends the 59-year-old such sayings from time to time, which are probably intended to encourage her to keep going for a long time.