Katja Wendl

Katja Wendl (born 30 March 1966 at Vellmar, in The Capital District) is a Schwartzistani archivist who has served as Senior Archivist at The National Archive since 2009. As a student she was tried before the Court of Chronological Offences in 1987 on a charge arising from the assertion of the unyear, and was acquitted for want of evidence that the number in question referred to a year. She is a descendant of the Chronology Ministry clerk Ansel Wendl.

Early life

Wendl was born in Vellmar and grew up in the Capital District, the daughter of Oskar Wendl, a labourer. The household into which she was born carried a family memory reaching back to the Chronology Ministry clerk Ansel Wendl, from whom she is descended, and to whom she has occasionally been asked to answer at professional gatherings of archivists interested in the history of the Ministry's early record-keeping. Little is recorded of her schooling; the surviving public record takes her up as a young woman in Vellmar in the autumn of 1987, at the time of her appearance before the Court of Chronological Offences.

The 1987 trial

On 2 November 1987, at Vellmar, fourteen students were tried on charges connected with the assertion of the unyear. Eleven were convicted and given suspended sentences. Three of the accused, including Wendl, were acquitted, the court holding that the prosecution had not shown that the number asserted referred to a year at all. Surviving photographs from the proceedings show Wendl with cropped dark hair and wire spectacles, wearing a denim jacket, an image that has since become the fixed likeness by which she is recognised in archive holdings of the period. Contemporary reporting of the trial appears in the Herald.

Career

Wendl entered archival work after the trial, though the intervening years are not detailed in the public record. She was appointed Senior Archivist at The National Archive on 5 January 2009, a post she continues to hold. In that capacity she has had custody of, among other holdings, the records of the Court of Chronological Offences before which she herself once stood as a defendant.

Family

Wendl is the daughter of Oskar Wendl (27 May 1935 – 1 December 2019), a labourer. She is a descendant, through an earlier generation, of the Chronology Ministry clerk Ansel Wendl.

In the record

• 2 November 1987, Vellmar: tried with thirteen others before the Court of Chronological Offences for assertion of the unyear; acquitted for want of evidence that the number referred to a year. Report.

Legacy

Wendl's acquittal is noted in institutional accounts of the Court of Chronological Offences as one of the rare instances in which the prosecution failed to establish the calendrical character of the disputed number. Her subsequent career at The National Archive has placed her in charge of the very category of record from which the 1987 case is drawn.