21/09/25 The Gutenberg Printing Press

It rainz in Mainz.

Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

I had a lazy morning.  I was tired, rain splattered against the windows, and  what with one thing and another it was a good morning for staying in bed and drinking tea out of grown-up sized cups.  All good things come to an end, however, and enventually I had to go out to face the drizzly day. 

Mainz was quiet on a rainy Sunday.  Church bells rang and we shared the streets with pigeons and people who, like us, seemed to be wandering in circles.  We tried to find the Roman Temple that was rumoured to be under one of the shoppping centres until Google told us it was closed so we couldn't have seen it even if we could find it, which we couldn't.

We found the town square which was a hive of activity with markets and lots of people, but the market was dedicated solely to fabric and although I like a good fabric haul myself I wasn't going to buy any on account of not wanting to haul it all over Europe with me for the next 6 weeks.

Mainz' claim to fame was the development in 1454 by Mr Johann Gutenberg of the Gutenberg movable type printing press which allowed for mechanical printing of books rather than the labourious creation of manuscripts by hand or by using the older screw presses.  We went looking for the Gutenberg Museum which, so all the signs assured us, had moved.  Where to, they weren't so clear.  Google Maps was no help, expressing the strong opinion that I was actually somewhere in the middle of the Rhine river. Suffice to say we went for a nice little traipse around Mainz' old town until we finally pinned down the Gutenberg Museum hiding on a bottom floor of the Natural History Museum, bought our tickets, and went inside. 

It was worth all the wandering to take a journey through the world of painstakingly lettered and illustrated books and to view two of the original 49 Gutenberg Bibles. The Bibles themselves lay in sturdy display cases inside a fireproof vault in the cellar of the old monastry which formed part of the Natural History Museum.

The vault.

The display.

The books. Printing was only done in black, with spaces left for the coloured bits to be added by hand. As a result each book is illustrated differently depending on the preferences of the owner and illustrator. Colours were added to the printing as everyone figured out how to use and improve the device. For illustrators, the writing was now on the wall.

We attended a demonstration of a Gutenberg press in action which was interesting but I'm sure I missed a lot of detail as the presentation was entirely in German. 

Back when Gutenberg invented his press it took 3 years to produce a book (by which I assumed they meant a full bible): using the press allowed the production of 180 books in the same time period. It was a huge revolution in terms of the ability to quickly produce and share information even though to modern eyes the process still looked labouriously time consuming.

Once the pages were printed they still had to be bound into book form, often with a cover of embossed and decorated leather over wood. It was all done by hand, a labourious and time consuming task. Books were rare and precious things.

Meandering back through the streets of Mainz, we came to the realisation that everything was shut on a Sunday afternoon and we stood a real risk of not being able to find any dinner and therefore having to fight each other for the sole banana we had stashed in the hotel cupboard. Thankfully our proximity to the railway station saved us: a Rewe To Go was open. Phew! Pastry to the rescue again.

My feet gave thanks for the breif reprieve from the 15000+ cobblestoned steps I had asked from them on previous days. We watched German TV and went to bed.

Today's door is brought to you courtesy of Mainz town square and a University building.