“Eninger Krätze” portable bookcase from the 18th century
The mobile bookshop of the pre-industrial age“Krätze” is a Southern German term for a lockable, wooden storage case. Colporteurs (book peddlers) carried these on their backs, so as to transport epinal prints, religious tracts, calendars, entertainment magazines and other printed writings around the country.
All Quiet on the Western Front
A pacifist bestseller about the First World War, 1928The first parts of the text of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front were published in the Vossische Zeitung in 1928. The publishing house started a major marketing campaign, which proved to be hugely successful. when it was published as a book at the start of 1929, it had already been ordered 30,000 times.
An Augsburg symbol calendar
Easy orientation throughout the course of the year, 1587Pictures, drawings and symbols can explain or even replace written texts for poor readers or the illiterate. Long before children learn to read for comprehension, they can read situations, pictures and pictograms.
Ancient Chinese inscribed stone
Stone copy of the first Wu-Chu stone drum, pre-1914These ten granite stones, weighing approximately 400 kilograms each, are referred to as “stone drums” due to the similarity to Chinese-style percussion instruments. They carry the oldest known Chinese stone inscriptions and are today housed in Beijing’s Palace Museum. These poetic texts, which describe hunting and fishing practices, are probably around 2,800 years old.
Arabic book of sayings
The written word as adornmentThis 18th century, handwritten book of Arabic sayings is a work of highly artistic calligraphy. Gold-framed tablets have been placed on marbled paper (Turkish: “ebru”) and bound into a codex.
Bänkel booklet for a few pfennig
A Cruel Stepmother or God is Just, undatedThe sale of small Bänkel and Moritat booklets was the ultimate goal of a Bänkel performance – it was the singer's livelihood. The booklets, which sold for approx. 10 pfennigs, contained the detailed narratives, the song lyrics, and rarely a pictorial representation.
Blue books
A pioneering success by publishing house Karl Robert Langewiesche, from 1909From the very beginning, the blue dust jacket was the visual identifier for the books issued by Dusseldorf publisher Karl Robert Langewiesche, established in 1902. The focus of the range was, in the words of founder Karl Robert Langewiesche (1874-1931), “quality mass-produced articles at low prices”, “so that my work may serve the broad masses, the very ones described as uneducated”.
Caricature of the ban on the newspaper Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung
The long arm of Prussian censorship, circa 1843On Christmas Day of 1842, a letter published in the Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung caused quite a stir among the readers. The letter, which was addressed to the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, was written by Georg Herwegh, a young revolutionary poet (and important representative) of the Vormärz period in Germany.
Catalogus librorum prohibitorum
An index on the indexAs director of the Vienna-based Studien- und Büchercensur-Hofkommission – the Austrian Commission for Educational and Literary Censorship - Gerard van Swieten set about reorganising Austrian censorship which, up to that point, had been largely carried out by the Jesuits. He began an Austrian directory of banned books based on the Index librorum prohibitorum of the Roman Catholic Church, conceived as a resource for state authorities and booksellers.
Censorship list from 1760
Rousseau and Voltaire as dangerous goodsGerard van Swieten arrived in Vienna in 1745 as the personal physician of Empress Maria Theresia 1745. He set about making reforms to the Austrian health and university systems.
Chinese book made of bamboo
Early book form from China, circa 93 CEThe handwritten weapons directory stands out because of its form, which is unusual in our writing culture. It consists of 13 narrow bamboo sticks with letters written on them and tied together with two pieces of string.
Cylinder phonograph, 1902-1905
Competition for shellac records and the gramophoneThe phonograph (Greek, literally: writer of sounds) is an acoustic, mechanical recording and playback device. The term refers to a speech recording and playback device, the invention of which was made public by Thomas Edison on November 21, 1877.
E-book
A book no matter where you are, early 21st centuryAlthough the first commercially published e-book – William Gibson’s novel Mona Lisa Overdrive – hit the shelves in 1988, this paperless form of literature long languished as a niche interest without widespread recognition. In the pioneering years of the internet, digital texts were mostly exchanged online free of charge and without the permission of authors and publishers.
Edict of Worms
Martin Luther’s writings are condemned, 1521 After Martin Luther refused to retract the ideas of his heretical writings at the Diet of Worms, he was issued with an imperial ban and thus declared an outlaw. The imperial decree of May 8, 1521 forbid the teaching and distribution of his printed works and future writings.
Emil and the Detectives
A children’s book classic by Erich Kästner, 1929Emil Kästner’s children’s book Emil and the Detectives has been one of the most-read German children’s books for decades. The story of Emil Tischbein, a boy from a small town who hunts a thief in 1920s Berlin, has been reprinted countless times since its first publication in 1929 and has been adapted numerous times for the screen, stage and radio and also turned into comic book versions and even board games.
Èpinal print
Explaining the world with pictures, 1811Èpinal prints were extremely popular pictorial and reading media of the 18th and 19th centuries. They combined text and pictures and provided informative, instructive, devotional, and entertaining material as well as news on a sheet of paper.
Farmer's calendar
A guide for everyday life, 1814In this Saxon Calendar, in addition to the calendar itself, which includes saints' days, name days, astrological signs, the movements of the planets, weekly scriptures and weather predictions, there are also free pages for personal notes. The handwritten remarks reveal the owner to be a farmer.
Feyerabend Bible, 1564
Martin Luther’s translation for the first time with uniform illustrationThis lavishly illustrated Bible was considered one of the most beautiful biblical creations of its era thanks to its 140 woodcuts with a uniform colour scheme, as created by Virgil Solis. After the appearance of Luther’s first full German biblical translation in 1534, so-called Luther Bibles began to be printed in different versions and in large numbers.
Geist und Maschine (Soul and Machine)
A film about the Bibliographical Institute in Leipzig, 1926The film Geist und Maschine (Soul and Machine) produced in 1926 by the Döring-Film-Werken in Hannover is regarded as one of the first major attempts by a German publishing house to make use of the (competing) medium of film for advertising purposes. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the publishing house, Richard Brodführer who was at that time an editor at the Bibliographical Institute was commissioned by company management to write a film script for a silent film about the company’s book production unit with a particular focus on the production of Meyers Lexikon.
Gothic book-binding by Johannes Richenbach
A masterpiece of Late Middle Ages book-binding art, after 1478The book binding, made of light-coloured leather with a delicate blind-stamped decoration, was done by the hand of Johannes Richenbach (died 1486), a prominent bookbinder of the 15th century. Stamps of roses and lilies, as well as of the image of Christ and the Agnus Dei decorate the front cover.
Gutenberg Bible from the collections of the Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum
A lost treasureThe most valuable object in the collections of the Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum was, up until 1945, a copy of the 42-page Gutenberg Bible, the first important incunable, printed on parchment, featuring decorative miniatures. Heinrich Klemm acquired the Bible in 1878.
Historia animalium by Conrad Gessner
Beasts and real existing creatures, 1551-1558Historia animalium, a work by the physician and naturalist Conrad Gessner (1516-1565), is a compendium of the entire body of zoological knowledge of the author’s era. Gessner’s associations with a vast array of European scholars proved invaluable during the compilation of the work.
Illustration of the Shop premises of Peter Hammer
Depiction of a fictitious publishing houseThe anti-Napoleon newspaper Neue Feuerbrände (New Fires) was one of this fictitious publishing house’s most notorious publications. The short-lived periodical, which was only published in 1807 and 1808, had a fire-red illustrated cover.
Joan Blaeus’ Great Atlas
Map series of the superlativeThe Atlas Maior was first published by the Amsterdam publisher Joan Blaeu in 1659. It consists of approximately 600 maps.
Leporello book from Sumatra
Prayers and talismanic phrases handwritten in the Batak languageThis Leporello is composed of a writing material that would be unusual in our modern culture: smoothened tree bark. Two wooden covers enclose the pages of the book which is held together by a rattan tie.
MATRIX ABC 52
Messages via ‘Signs – Books – Networks’The installation matrix abc 52 by media artist Boris Petrovsky is a unique communication system Zeichen – Bücher – Netze (Signs – Books – Networks) which can be viewed as an analogue medium in the case at the Deutschen Buch- und Schriftmuseums as well as synchronously accessed and read as a mobile application on the web.
Mazeppa or Der Todesritt durch die Wildniß
A best-selling colportage novel, c. 1883This title page introduces the first part of a 100-part colportage novel from the late 19th century. Since the 1860s, colporteurs had been selling such booklets door-to-door; due to their low price (in this case 10 pfennigs), even poor readers could afford them.
Peregrinationes in terram sanctam by Bernhard von Breidenbach
The first Christian pilgrim’s guidebookBernhard von Breidenbach (1440-1497), canon of Mainz, departed on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1483. He motives were not solely religious; he also had the idea of writing a guidebook for pilgrims to the Holy Land.
PlayStation
Worldwide successful game console from Japan, 1994Introduced in 1994 by the Japanese electronics manufacturer Sony and available on the retail market up until 2006, the PlayStation is today considered the epitome of the modern computer games console. What started out as a collaborative project between Sony and the video games producer Nintendo, eventually developed into an enormously successful console that entered the video games market as a competitor to the then-dominant Super Nintendo and the hastily launched Sega Saturn.
Postcard
From text medium to visual medium, early 20th centuryAlthough the private Parisian postage operator Petite Post was already offering readable messages as a product as early as 1760, it was still another century before the first, official, state-produced postcards appeared. On October 1, 1869, the so-called “correspondenzkarte” was introduced in Austria-Hungary. It featured a printed postage value. The regional states of Germany followed suit and released an equivalent medium shortly afterwards.
Propaganda
Edward Bernays’ pioneering PR manual, 1928Since its linguistic appropriation by totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, in particular by the Nazis, the term ‘propaganda’ has had negative overtones. However, this was not the case when American author Edward Bernays (1891-1995) chose the word with Latin origins as the title for his influential book on the methodology of modern public relations work.
Record
Music for everyone, from 1897 onwardsAfter American Thomas Alva Edison discovered in 1877 that sounds could be recorded and reproduced mechanically, the cylinder phonograph he invented for this purpose did not remain without competition for long. Only ten years later, his colleague Emil Berliner, who had emigrated to the States from Germany, applied for a patent for his so-called gramophone which, as a device used purely for playing, was the forerunner of the record player.
Rotary printing papers
Cheap coloured papers for book binders, cardboard manufacturers and playing card producersColoured papers made it possible to render more attractive the outer appearance of objects such as book covers, albums, boxes or cartons in a diverse manner of ways. When making playing cards, rotary printing papers, thus named because of how they were manufactured, also made it possible to print the rear side of the cards with a fully identical pattern.
Sachsenspiegel (Saxon mirror)
Law in the 13th centuryThe “Sachsenspiegel” (“Saxon Mirror”) is one of the most significant works of German medieval law. Under this title, Eike von Repgow depicted prevailing common law for the first time between 1220 and 1235. This contributed to the canonisation of legal provisions and to their wider dissemination.
Scene with a Bänkelsänger
A wandering digest of sensations, c. 1860Here a Bänkelsänger points to pictures with a stick while performing. The oilcloth scrolls with arresting pictures were intended to attract a crowd.
Schedelsche Weltchronik (Nuremberg Chronicle)
A mammoth work from the era of early book printingThe Weltchronik (Nuremberg Chronicle), a work authored by Nuremberg physician Hartmann Schedel, is located historically at the turning point between a medieval conception of the world and an exact, modern world historiography.
Sheet from a Gutenberg Bible
Who cut up the Bible?This single page from a Gutenberg Bible was bought by the Leipziger Buch- und Schriftmuseum in 1956 in the antique book shop of Menno Hertzberger in Amsterdam as a replacement for the specimen that was brought to Moscow during the war. The puzzle as to the provenance of the page was only solved recently: in the early print phase, one book wasn’t finished yet when it left the printing press.
Smartphone
A handy media all-rounder of the early 21st centuryThe term ‘smartphone’ refers to mobile telephones which combine the functionality of normal mobiles with modern address and calendar functionality, interactive entertainment programmes, as well as online access. In recent years, target-group-oriented applications – apps – have enjoyed increasing popularity, through which devices gain quick access to Internet-based services.
The Dreaming Boys
An expressionistic children’s book by Oskar Kokoschka, 1908The Austrian painter and graphic artist Oskar Kokoschka was given a commission by the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops) in 1907 to design a children’s book. He wrote a text about first love, the period between childhood and adulthood and the longing for foreign countries – issues that already interested him at that time.
The tragic story of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
A masterpiece from the Cranach-Presse printing house, 1929Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prince of Denmark printed by Cranach-Presse in Weimar is one of this printing house’s most important works and one of the most important hand-pressed prints in German book art. Harry Graf Kessler was responsible for the type and print of the volume, and it was issued by the publishers Insel-Verlag in Leipzig and den S. Fischer Verlag in Berlin.
The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer
The masterpiece by William Morris, 1896The volume The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer from the year 1896 is the main work printed by Kelmscott Press. William Morris saw the English poet and writer Chaucer (circa 1340-1400) as a role model for his own literary aspirations.
Title page of the Roman index
Proscribed under the Inquisition, 1711In the period from 1559 to 1948, the Roman Catholic Church published the Index librorum prohibitorum on an irregular basis. The index served as a directory of books which were not to be read by Catholics, under threat of excommunication.
Toy theatre
Theatre and opera in miniature, c. 1890Toy theatre, miniature theatres made of paper, were a popular form of entertainment in the 19th century. The bourgeoisie had discovered theatre and opera culture and wanted to transfer that enthusiasm to the living room. Scenery, figures and props were cut from coloured Èpinal prints and adhered to cardboard to create a set.
Type Samples by Peter Hammer, 1808
A phantom publisher as authorThe citing of Peter Hammer as the author of type samples is unusual for two reasons. The name was known as that of a fictitious publisher, not that of a writer.
Umbra vitae
Expressionist book design by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1924Expressionist poet Georg Heym died at a young age (1887-1912); his works appeared shortly after his death and inspired Expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.
Ushabti
Burial objects in Ancient EgyptUshabti is a term used to describe Ancient Egyptian burial objects which, according to Egyptian belief systems, worked on behalf of the deceased in the underworld and represented them before a court of the dead. The figurines were stored in or near the deceased’s grave.
War of the Worlds
A radio drama causes a sensation, 1938On 30 October 1938, the evening before Halloween, the population of America’s East Coast was confronted with the unimaginable: the CBS radio station broadcast a report of a violent alien invasion that had started in New Jersey and had now reached New York in spite of desperate measures by the human inhabitants to defend against the attack.
Was hört unser Kind durchs Radio? (What does our child hear through the radio?)
A book all about radio to be read out loud, 1925Published by the Jaser Kunstverlag of Nuremberg in 1925, Was hört unser Kind durchs Radio? (What does our child hear though the radio?) - conceived as a pedagogical picture book by its authors Clara Fritzsche (text) and Johann Peter Werth (illustrations) - gave children an introduction to the variety of programmes on the new radio medium by means of short rhyming verses. The title, which is clearly aimed at parents, indicates that the book was to be read aloud so as to stimulate the interest of young listeners.
Wax tablet with interest amounts on it
Early medium for notes, bills and lettersThese wooden memorandum books, coated on both sides with coloured beeswax, contain written entries detailing interest yields on monastic land, including vineyard properties, from 1360 until the middle of the 15th century. Wax tablets were an important written medium beginning in the Ancient Greek and Roman periods lasting until the Middle Ages.
Zedler’s Encyclopaedia
The knowledge of the times in around 300,000 articles, 1732-1750The most comprehensive and important German-speaking encyclopaedia of the 18th century was published over the course of more than 20 years by the Leipzig-based publisher Johann Heinrich Zedler. From 1732 onwards, he released 64 full volumes and 4 supplemental editions of the Großes vollständiges Universallexikon aller Wissenschaften und Künste, known today simply as “der Zedler”.
