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AUGSBURG MACHT DRUCK
An exhibition about the beginnings of printing with moveable type in a
15th century urban centre
In March 1468, five weeks after Gutenberg's death, the first book was
printed in Augsburg. Already in the preceding year, Augsburg's first
printer Günther Zainer seems to have moved from Strasbourg to the Free
Imperial City in order to set up a printing press. To celebrate the
550th anniversary of the arrival of printing with moveable type in
Augsburg, the Staats- und Stadtbibliothek, University Library and the
Diocesan Museum of the city jointly present an exhibition in which some
60 books printed in Augsburg during the incunabula period will be on
display.
Books produced in the earliest Augsburg printing workshops count among
those library and museum treasures that often feature in exhibitions all
around the world and regularly show up as highlights in the catalogues
of leading antiquarian booksellers. Augsburg letterpress printing bears
witness to the city's splendid cultural and economic history, but it
also played a key role in the history of German and European printing
and publishing: Alongside Cologne, Nuremberg, Leipzig and Frankfurt am
Main, Augsburg was one of the leading centres of book culture in the
Holy Roman Empire. However, in spite of its pivotal role, Augsburg has
never before hosted an exhibition dedicated to the incunabula printed in
the city.
The corpus of Augsburg incunabula is noteworthy or even unique for
several reasons. First, books in German accounted for 60 % of the entire
output of the local presses and thus significantly outnumbered books in
Latin. Nowhere else were so many books printed in the vernacular
language before the year 1500. They contained texts on an astonishing
variety of subjects and for a wide range of purposes, serving the needs
of entertainment as well as those of religion and instruction.
In particular, Augsburg was renowned for printed editions of the German
Bible; and especially in the year 2017, the 500th anniversary of
Luther's Theses, it is well worth remembering that the majority of the
German Bibles printed before Luther in the southern half of the Empire
came from Augsburg presses. The exhibition also pays heed to this
anniversary by exploring the new ways of publishing which the media
transformation of the 15th century opened up to Luther and which he used
to great effect.
Another distinguishing feature of Augsburg incunabula is the prominent
role of images. From early on, the printers made abundant use of
woodcuts, thus supplementing the printed word with printed images.
Nevertheless, the tradition of painted book decoration widely practised
in manuscripts continued well into the incunable period; thus, artists
from Augsburg also made an important contribution to the history of
illuminating printed books.
AUGSBURG MACHT DRUCK
Die Anfänge des Buchdrucks in einer Metropole des 15. Jahrhunderts
Augsburg, Diözesanmuseum St. Afra
March 10th - June 18th 2017
www.museum-st-afra.de
Catalogue:
AUGSBURG MACHT DRUCK. Die Anfänge des Buchdrucks in einer Metropole des
15. Jahrhunderts. Ed. by Günter Hägele and Melanie Thierbach. Augsburg
2017. 232 pp., 130 illustrations. ISBN 978-3-00-055663-0. ¤ 29,80.
with contributions by Wolfgang Augustyn, Marion Gindhart, Günter Hägele,
Hans-Jörg Künast, Karl-Georg Pfändtner, Christoph Reske, Bettina Wagner,
Werner Williams-Krapp, Klaus Wolf, Helmut Zäh et al.
The catalogue is on sale in the museum and can also be ordered from the
museum
Diözesanmuseum St. Afra
Kornhausgasse 3-5
86152 Augsburg
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Dr. Günter Hägele
Handschriften, Alte Drucke, Sondersammlungen
Abteilungsleitung
Universitätsbibliothek Augsburg
Universitätsstraße 22
86159 Augsburg