Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town Into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe--And Started the Protestant Reformation (50 page)

Through these tales of God’s special protection, and Luther’s special powers, we are tiptoeing toward an uncomfortable image: that of Luther as saint. This was especially difficult for a movement that had denounced the false honoring of saints in the Catholic world, and even in some parts of Europe inhibited the use of saints’ names for children. Two woodcut portraits of Luther with the nimbus of sainthood were a short-lived aberration of the Strasbourg book industry and never officially affirmed. But the association with St. Martin, a popular saint in the Rhineland, was enduring. Father, patron, judge, and friend; members of the congregations made of Luther what they would. It was an extraordinary legacy to a church as frequently in need of comfort and reassurance as of teaching.

WITTENBERG AND JENA

In 1552 John Frederick, the vanquished and deposed elector of Saxony, was released from captivity. Wittenberg was no longer his, so he made his way to Jena, ruled in his absence by his three defiantly loyal sons. This new capital was now nurtured as the true spiritual home of Luther’s movement. From 1558 it had the long-promised university; from 1553 its own printing press. This became the fulcrum of a concerted effort to claim the Reformation heritage for the heirs of its original protector, Frederick the Wise. Once again the printing press stood at the heart of the Reformation conflict, although now it was a conflict not between Catholic and Protestant, but between contending factions of Luther’s own church. The genesis and development of the press in Jena
is one of the most singular examples of the regeneration of the printing industry stimulated by the Reformation.

The Jena printing industry grew from small, and from Luther’s point of view somewhat unpromising, beginnings.
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Between 1523 and 1524 Michael Kramer briefly ran a press exclusively devoted to publications of the works of Andreas von Karlstadt and his supporters—hardly a cause dear to Luther’s heart. This was one of the pop-up enterprises typical of these years; having served its purpose, Kramer retreated back to Erfurt, and Jena had no further involvement in the printing industry until after the Schmalkaldic War. But from 1553, when printing returned, until the end of the century, Jena’s printers turned out a considerable volume of works: over two thousand in all. Many of these were substantial books. From a standing start Jena had become a major force in the industry.
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The confessional purpose of the new press became clear from the identity of the first man recruited to run it: none other than Christian Rödinger, called from Magdeburg to establish a press under the direct protection of the newly released John Frederick. Rödinger was lured by lavish incentives: the provision of a generous workshop in the town’s former Carmelite cloister, financial assistance, and, most important of all, the exclusive rights to print Luther’s works in John Frederick’s (admittedly much diminished) territories.
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Rödinger’s most significant and complex assignment was the Jena edition of Luther’s complete works, an unfinished multivolume project passed after his death to his heirs. From 1558 Rödinger’s heirs shared the Jena market with Thomas Rebart, a former apprentice who had performed a variety of roles in the book industry before opening his own shop. His business, perhaps reflecting his previous roles in the trade, was very much oriented to the Frankfurt market. He also, in time-honored fashion, married Rödinger’s daughter. Donat Richtzenhan, another apprentice of Rödinger, went one better: he married his widow. Jena printing, in fact, continued to be the business of this one extended family until the end of the century. In 1568 Christian Rödinger Junior set up his own shop. When he died his widow married first Günther Hüttich then Ernst von Gera, who successively continued
the shop. The establishment of a new shop by Tobias Steinmann was prepared by a strategic marriage to the daughter of Rebart. Salomon Richtzenhan, who carried the tradition into the seventeenth century, was the son of Donat and his wife Margarethe Rödinger. Such marriages were an absolute commonplace means of conserving capital and maintaining market position in the early modern print world, and, for the apprentice, a rare opportunity to become a master tradesman. The Jena example is, however, rather extreme. Wittenberg, as we have seen, tends toward the other end of the spectrum, with growth fueled by the frequent arrival of ambitious new players from outside the city. This undoubtedly contributed, particularly in the early years, to the very high level of product innovation and dynamism of this rapidly expanding industry.

The Jena press, in contrast, was created to perform a precise and limited role. Although a new industry, it proved to be remarkably well capitalized. This it owed to two converging circumstances: the continuing robust market for Luther’s own writings, and an ideologically driven publishing program underpinned by direct subsidy. After Luther’s death, editions of his works were published quite freely around Germany. In the absence of his commanding presence, and with no chance of newly minted works to encourage compliance with his wishes, there was now little to deter printers from pursuing short-term commercial advantage. Yet even so Jena secured a share of this highly competitive market second only to Wittenberg itself.
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This would not, however, have been sufficient to create the working capital for so ambitious a project as the Jena edition of Luther’s collected works. Here Rödinger relied on the investment of a substantial publisher. With this cash injection the project made rapid progress, despite its size and complexity. Two volumes were published in 1555 and two more in 1556, along with the first volume of a Latin collection; and these were substantial volumes in folio, characteristically close to six hundred leaves each. Rödinger reputedly devoted four presses to the task; he would indeed have needed them all to keep abreast of it.

The struggle between Jena and Wittenberg to appropriate Luther’s
theological heritage also dictated that the two competing editions of the collected works should adopt radically different organizational structures.
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The Wittenberg theologians had adopted a thematic approach, grouping together works of the same type or addressing the same issues. Jena adopted a strictly chronological organization. In the atmosphere of distrust that now characterized the relationship between rival keepers of the Lutheran flame, this was intended to legitimize the charge that the Wittenbergers distorted Luther’s message by taking his words out of their historical context.

The Jena challenge was direct and serious, the more so as these were difficult years for Wittenberg. Luther’s death, depriving the city of its most priceless asset, had been followed within a year by the suspension of the university, conquest and occupation, and the transfer to Maurice. Even when the university was reestablished and the city had settled down under Albertine rule, it was still a difficult decision for pious parents whether to entrust their children to the university in such circumstances. The death of Melanchthon in 1560 deprived it of its most luminous remaining teacher. To add to the difficulties, Wittenberg had to adapt to the fact that it was no longer the only university in Electoral Saxony, since Maurice brought with him into his enhanced territories the venerable university of the Albertine territories, Leipzig.

For all that this new competitive situation posed new challenges, there is no sign that Wittenberg experienced serious economic difficulties or went into any sort of long-term decline. Certainly the city was able to continue to finance significant building projects. In 1570 the town hall built in the first flush of the Reformation was pulled down and replaced by a new, larger building, the impressive edifice that dominates the main square today.
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A fine, confident monument to the city’s wealth and international status, the new five-story structure bears comparison with other new town halls erected in this same era in Antwerp and Emden, two other boomtowns reinvesting the proceeds of international trade.

A P
ROSPEROUS
C
ITY:
T
HE
W
ITTENBERG
R
ATHAUS

Despite the increased competition and political difficulties in the decades after Luther’s death, Wittenberg remained the preeminent center of Lutheran education and publishing. This imposing new town hall replaced one built only fifty years before, in the first years of the Reformation.

Certainly Wittenberg’s printing industry continued to thrive. None of the established printers working in the city at the time of Luther’s
death had departed as a result of the political turmoil. Unsurprisingly, 1547 was a rough year, with only thirty titles published, but within a decade production had recovered, and then exceeded prewar levels. In the second half of the century Wittenberg could continue to trade very successfully on its reputation as the fountainhead of the Reformation. Religious books continued to dominate output, reinforced by the multiplication of numerous academic dissertations, produced to be distributed as part of the examination process and then sold by the agile printer as bundled collections. Since the student was expected to meet the initial cost of publication, and publication was a required element of supplication for the degree, the only limitation on what could be charged was the customer’s poverty, particularly in places where the university required students to make use of the services of one designated printer. That we know this privilege was sometimes abused is clear from protests made to
the governing bodies of different European institutions against the prices charged for these small publications. Happily in Wittenberg the work seems to have been spread around, honoring Luther’s principles even after his death.

This was a healthy industry, still one of the cornerstones of the Wittenberg economy. The printers’ work supported a considerable number operating in ancillary trades, not least a large number of bookbinders, a sure sign that local citizens were themselves beginning to put together extensive collections. Not all would eke out more than a modest living: some of the lesser lights of the industry were frequently found in the city’s lowest tax bracket. But among the more established figures the gains to be made were very considerable. Markplatz 3, the impressive four-story building close to the second Cranach house, was from 1564 the home of Samuel Selfisch, titan of the local publishing industry.
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Selfisch, who was a major supplier of paper to the local printers’ shops, exhibited one other characteristic of this phase of the European printing industry, a pronounced tendency for the controlling interest in the trade to pass from printers to publishers. The term publisher covers a wide variety of individuals involved in the book trade, whose main role was to provide the investment capital to underwrite projects in which they were interested. By and large they did not run their own presses, but would contract out this stage of the production process to one of the city printers. Once the work was printed, they would then take control of the distribution (and much of the profit). In the case of Selfisch and other paper merchants this might involve a simple barter transaction: they would provide the necessary paper in return for a stipulated number of printed sheets (the ratio was normally one printed sheet for every two sheets of paper, reflecting the industry norm that paper made up half the costs of production). This was an arrangement that suited both parties. The printer solved a difficult problem of supply, and eased cash flow, and the partners cut out an additional middleman who would otherwise demand his cut.

Archival records, though fragmentary in this period, provide illuminating hints as to how this market functioned, and its underlying ruthlessness. By 1539 the printer Joseph Klug owed the publisher Moritz Goltz considerable sums of money. To assist him in meeting this obligation Goltz contracted Klug to print a large number of books: two thousand copies of the dialogs of Urbanus Rhegius, three thousand of Melanchthon’s grammar, six thousand copies of two different hymnbooks—a total of seventeen thousand books.
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Goltz loaned Klug the money to enable the work to go ahead, on the expectation that profit from sales, along with the delivery to Goltz, would allow Klug to pay off the debt. But these were strikingly large print runs, and the local sales that would have rescued Klug from his financial difficulties did not materialize. In 1540 Klug’s wife appealed to the council, asking for this onerous contract to be set aside. It may be that Klug’s difficulties were compounded by illness and he was too sick to attend this hearing in person; certainly he subsequently revived, and printed on until his death in 1555.