The article reports on the ink corrosion on handwritten documents at the Marburg University. The documents at the university were stored in barrier papers and were partially micro-filmed. The plan to digitalize jurist Carl Friedrich von Savigny's estate offered the first opportunity to display a spectrum of ink corrosion damage symptoms and to take conservation measures.
The article presents information on the effect of simmering on the chemical and mechanical properties of paper. Iron gall ink corrosion of paper threatens to destroy a large portion of historic manuscripts, records and drawings globally. A great deal of effort has been and continues to be, invested in studying and understanding the causes and pathways of iron gall ink corrosion of paper, and the efficacy of various conservation treatments. Among the many traditional treatments, "boiling paper" as a treatment for corroded iron gall ink documents has been used for more than 30 years 68.