Early career historian and archivist Nicolas Kernel, currently a trainee at the Historical Archives of the European Union, has produced a fascinating online exhibition based on the research he conducted for his master's thesis in Contemporary Archive Management at the University of Haute-Alsace. His meticulously researched article, written during his internship at the Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU), explored the use and iconographic symbolism of seals. The work, defended on 13 November 2025, was highly praised by the jury of examiners and was cited for its unique contributions at the crossroads of institutional history, diplomacy and documentary practices.
After several weeks of additional work, and to mark the end of his traineeship at the Archives, Nicolas, along with the HAEU archival team, has transformed his thesis project into an online exhibition. The exhibit, published in both French and English, highlights the seals preserved in the Archives and invites the public to not only visualise the artefacts, but to discover the power struggles they conceal.
Seals and their use in the early European communities
In his thesis, Nicolas explored the role of the seal as a central tool of legitimation in the early European communities, arguing that it is not a mere formal object but a true instrument of symbolic and legal power. Through a detailed analysis of sealing practices, iconographic choices, and rules of use, he highlighted how the institutions sought to make their authority visible, to guarantee the authenticity of their acts, and to forge a credible institutional identity. The seal thus appears as an object that is “both material and performative: it certifies documents, entails specific legal responsibilities, and contributes to a genuine staging of administrative and judicial power”. Nicolas’ study also emphasised the decisive role of certain actors, often drawn from the administration, in these processes of documentary standardisation and normalisation, revealing the importance of administrative work in the concrete construction of European legitimacy.
While at the HAEU, Nicolas carried out two complementary case studies based on the holdings in the Florence deposits: the Court of Justice and the EURATOM Commission. On the one hand, the Court of Justice adopted the seal at a very early stage as a strong and unified symbol, inscribing itself in a long-standing European judicial tradition, drawing on classical iconography and a reference to Latin in order to affirm the solemnity and authority of Community law. Conversely, within the EURATOM Commission, the use of the seal stemmed more from a gradual administrative process, marked by heterogeneous practices, successive adjustments, and a growing attention to legal responsibility and the traceability of acts. The comparison brings out a striking contrast between a judicial institution attached to symbolic continuity and an administration in the process of being built, confronted with the need to standardise its working tools. It nevertheless reveals an essential common point: in both cases, mastery of documentary forms and signs of authentication proves indispensable for establishing the authority of European institutions and making their decisions acceptable, legible, and durable.
Why the seal?
When asked about his choice for his thesis topic, Nicolas replied, laughing “I simply love seals! Not wax, but seals.” His fascination for sphragistics began while carrying out his first master’s degree in medieval history at the University of Strasbourg, where his thesis focused on Richard Puller of Hohenbourg, a fifteenth-century Alsatian homosexual knight. In the course of his research he discovered Richard’s seal, which permitted an approach combining social, cultural, and representational history. “For me, the seal is an object at the heart of multiple interests: the material forms of authority, processes of documentary standardisation, and the symbolic construction of institutions, from the Middle Ages to the contemporary period. Simply fascinating, isn’t it?”
Nicolas’ passion for the preservation of these medieval seals has not waned. He continues voluntarily with the sigillography organisation ‘Sigillographie de l’Alsace et du Rhin supérieur’, which inventories and collects Alsatian seals in order to upload them to the online database SIGILLA.
A formative experience at the HAEU
“My gratitude will remain beyond words for all the people who surrounded and supported me in this project and helped me bring it to completion—especially for allowing me to carry out the almost complete inventory of all the seals preserved in the HAEU deposits. To do this, I went into the repositories hunting for even the most primitive seal, sifting through boxes and drawers from both the institutional and private collections.”
“When I arrived at the HAEU, I had high hopes that I would be able to complete my master’s degree in archival science through an interesting on-site experience. My academic path has been transnational since its start, with a Franco-German bachelor’s degree in history between Strasbourg and the ancient city of Trier. I was therefore perfectly delighted to find myself once again in a European and multilingual context! But I must say that I am ultimately fulfilled by this wonderful project, which I hope has been successfully completed: thank you to everyone!”