Saskia Limbach

Handschriftliche Ergänzungen, Eintragungen oder Veränderungen sind in zahlreichen gedruckten Büchern der frühen Neuzeit zu finden. Neben Besitzvermerken (die z.T. sogar Drohungen im Hinblick auf Diebe enthielten) war es für gelehrte Humanisten selbstverständlich, typographische Texte mit einem Schreibinstrument in der Hand zu lesen, damit sie durch inhaltsbezogene Notizen oder gar Zeichnungen die Inhalte besser verinnerlichen konnten. Darüber hinaus wurden gedruckte Texte handschriftlich erweitert, um sie in einen neuen Kontext zu stellen, oder theoretische Annahmen wurden praktischen Beobachtungen gegenübergestellt, um sie richtig zu stellen. Durchschossene Exemplare wurden entweder mit großem Zeilenabstand gedruckt oder mit zusätzlichen Seiten versehen, damit die Leser ihre Gedanken, Übersetzungen oder Beobachtungen vermerken konnten. In England wurden Schreibkalender sogar mit dickeren Seiten versehen, die mit einer feinen Schicht aus einer Gips-Mixtur behaftet waren, damit die darauf geschriebenen Notizen später wieder weggewischt werden konnten, um neue Vermerke einfügen zu können.

Während vor einigen Jahrzehnten gedruckte Bücher mit handschriftlichen Annotationen noch als ‚unsauber‘ galten und daher seltener gesammelt wurden, werden handschriftliche Notizen in den Druckwerken der frühen Neuzeit in den letzten Jahren zunehmend wichtiger. Heute werden annotierte Bücher sehr geschätzt, da sie die Interessen, Lesemethoden und Wissenspraktiken zeitgenössischer Rezipienten aufzeigen. Es gibt mittlerweile eine Vielzahl von Studien, die sowohl Inhalte als auch Arbeitsweisen anhand der Notizen untersuchen und so Rückschlüsse zum Beispiel auf Diktiermethoden im schulischen und universitären Unterricht erlauben. Zudem gibt es internationale Projekte, wie Annotated Books online, einem Projekt, welches über 100 annotierte Exemplare verzeichnet, unter anderem von Martin Luther und Philip Melanchthon.

Auch auf kleineren Publikationen, wie Einblattdrucken, lassen sich Annotationen finden, die sogar so extensiv sein können, dass der gedruckte Text weitestgehend in den Hintergrund tritt. Diesen Einblättern, denen häufig noch zu wenig Bedeutung beigemessen wird, waren meist mit großen Rändern um den gedruckten Text ausgestattet, der von Zeitgenossen vielseitig genutzt wurde. So wurden neben, über und unter den Satzspiegel u.a. Informationen eingeordnet und Ideen niedergeschrieben, die zur Interpretation der Nachrichten oder zu Vorbereitung auf Disputationen helfen sollten. Für manche Drucksachen, wie Verordnungen und Formulare, war die handschriftliche Vervollständigung sogar unabdingbar.

Um diese Funktionen der Handschrift im Druck zu untersuchen, soll im Folgenden zunächst ein kurzer genereller Überblick über Einblattdrucke des 16. Jahrhunderts im deutschsprachigen Raum gegeben werden, um danach genauer auf drei Gattungen – Neuigkeiten, Disputationen und Amtsdrucke – einzugehen, in welchen sich vielfach gedruckte Texte und handschriftliche Eintragungen vereinigen. Dabei sollen zuerst die verschiedenen Funktionen der Einblattdrucke, auch mit Blick auf die Rezipienten, vorgestellt werden, um herausarbeiten zu können, wie sich diese Funktionen durch die handschriftlichen Erweiterungen geändert haben. In vielen Fällen ist zu beobachten, dass mit Einblattdrucken genau wie mit umfangreicheren Publikationen interagiert wurde und dabei die Anmerkungen und Zusätze weit über bloße Lesehilfen hinaus gingen.

Although Sigmund Feyerabend was not a noble character, he will always be closely linked to the entire German literature [published] in the sixteenth century, and his name will remain unforgettable.

With these words, Heinrich Pallmann concludes his extensive bibliography on one of the greatest publishers not only in Frankfurt but the entire German lands. Other scholars following Pallmann have attested Feyerabend’s ‘perspicacity’ as well as his ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ and his ‘necessary ruthlessness for making rapid progress’. Feyerabend certainly made a stellar career: soon after he began work in Frankfurt in the 1550s, he formed collaborations with other printers and publishers to share the risks of the fickle book business. From the very beginning he knew how important support was and therefore frequently petitioned the city council for legal protection or permissions to produce a publication; he was quick to sue anyone who dared to compete with him; and when he himself was sued for not settling his debts, Feyerabend tried shady tricks and chicane to avoid paying his dues as long as he could.3 With this determination, it may hardly be surprising that between 1570 and 1577 Feyerabend quadrupled his assets.

Fortunately for modern-day scholars, Feyerabend’s many, sometimes hostile, interactions with his suppliers, partners and clients left an abundance of evidence. It allows us to peek behind the curtain of arguably the most prosperous book business in sixteenth-century Frankfurt. After providing a short overview of currency, value of money and paper units, this chapter will briefly introduce Feyerabend and contextualise his activities within the Frankfurt book business at the time. I will then approach the prices of Feyerabend’s books with two in-depth analyses of particular sources. Part I will concentrate on the sales register compiled for the Frankfurt spring fair in 1565, a truly magnificent source, which allows us to trace Feyerabend’s sales practices, his vast network and the instant sellers in his publishing program. Part II will analyse two book catalogues, published by Feyerabend in 1588 and his heirs in 1597, respectively, which both contain prices for the books on offer. At that time, Feyerabend concentrated mostly on publishing Latin law books and the developments in the prices over the period of nearly a decade will show why these publications were so lucrative. Finally, I will discuss which factors influenced the prices for Feyerabend’s books, paying special attention to works by the same authors as well as multivolume publications.

This chapter is based on many different types and sources of data, including prices for the books, prices for the smallest units of the books (one printed sheet), references to the specific editions and their publication years. While this extensive data is essential to support the arguments made throughout this chapter, the exhaustive details may also interrupt the reading flow. Therefore, the text only includes displays of the data in the form of graphs, diagrams and tables. Those readers who seek more specifics about the exact data behind the visuals will find extensive tables in the Appendix.

The existence of women in the early modern book business has long been acknowledged, especially after Natalie Zemon Davis’s illustrious study on women workers in Lyon. Yet only recently the topic experienced a surge of interest as seen with the extraordinary high attendance of over 300 participants at the USTC conference in 2021 on ‘Gender and the Book Trades’. The books, articles and essays that have already been published show vividly that women played a major role in the early modern book trade: in many parts of Europe women contributed significantly to the production, sale and distribution of books. In Spain, England, France and the Low Countries numerous women headed printing or publishing businesses although female labour could be much more restricted than that of males. One of the best-known examples is Charlotte Guillard, who ran a print shop on her own in Paris for two entire decades (1537–1557) and has most recently been the subject of an in-depth study.

The Holy Roman Empire was no exception, yet we still hardly know anything about these women. In many cases, widows continued the business under their husband’s name, as creating a brand became more and more important in the business with books. Therefore, in the colophon of their publications women frequently did not include their given names but instead used the more generic expression ‘widow of’. We therefore have to look beyond the printed books for further evidence if we want to uncover more about these important female entrepreneurs in the early modern world.

An insightful document in this context is the funeral sermon for the printer Katharina Rebart. It is one of the few contemporary publications (currently known) about women printers and has not received any scholarly attention. The pamphlet was printed in 1606 and includes significant details about Rebart’s life and her work as printer in Jena, bookseller in Frankfurt and even paper mill owner in the vicinity of Strasbourg. In the following I will reconstruct Rebart’s biography and compare it to other women producers in the book business at that time. Focussing in particular on the women’s lives, their families and their socio-economic position, this analysis will clear up some misconceptions about the work of women printers in the Holy Roman Empire.

This chapter introduces those printers and publishers who were involved in the process and considers the economics of the local print industry, which was, at the time, the fastest-growing in the entire Holy Roman Empire. By analyzing the university’s interactions with book producers, especially with respect to Melanchthon’s letters, which reveal his close ties to the book industry, I argue that even in this dominant center of printing, the relationship between academics and printers/publishers could be rather fraught; authors and editors even referred to the producers of their books as “beasts,” “harpies,” and “men of iron.” Drawing on hitherto unexplored sources, I also shed light on the prices of academic books, their print runs, and the reuse of illustrations in different editions. Finally, I establish how students in sixteenth-century Wittenberg could obtain academic books for their studies and how expensive the Sphaera was in comparison to other books and commodities.

Dieses Kapitel gibt einen Überblick über Medien und Medialität zur Konfliktlösung in der Frühen Neuzeit

Disputations and lectures were the twin pillars of academic teaching in the early modern period. In sixteenth-century Europe students and professors of all subjects defended their theses in public disputations. These academic events were usually chaired by a praeses who sat at a lectern slightly higher than the others. In the German university system, the dean of the candidate’s faculty as well as two professors joined the praeses, and together the scholars challenged the candidate by asking him questions. In addition, professors and students in the audience were permitted to contradict the candidate.

In Basel, medical disputations had to follow a tight protocol which defined the
respondent’s behaviour in great detail. At the start of the disputation the candidate had to welcome the audience and briefly present his theses. He then had to listen to the contra arguments and refute them respectfully. At the end of the disputation, usually no later than eleven o’clock in the morning, the respondent had to thank the audience. If the candidate failed to obey any of these rules, it was the duty of the dean to intervene.

In his journal, Felix Platter, the renowned sixteenth-century physician, offers us a more personal recollection of a mid-sixteenth-century disputation in Basel. During the debate the candidate faced several professors who contradicted his statements. Among them were the dean of the medical faculty, Oswald Baer, and the professors of practical and theoretical medicine respectively, Johann Huber and Isaak Keller. They were joined by Heinrich Pantaleon, Philipp Bech and Johann Jacob Huggelin who also challenged Platter’s theses.

To invite scholars like Huber, Keller and Huggelin to such events, documents - also called disputations - were produced prior to the event. These documents were given to potential visitors as well as pasted on doors and walls to announce the event. Towards the end of the century, such printed disputations were increasingly used as advertisement to praise the medical education in Basel. Produced in dozens of copies, the documents could easily be sent to friends, family members but also to scholars outside the university town. This additional function of printed medical disputation becomes obvious in their design. It changes significantly over the course of the sixteenth century. The survival of over five hundred medical disputations from the sixteenth century indicates just how important a role they played in the corporate life of the university.

Despite their abundance, however, these numerous medical disputations have received almost no attention from scholars, in particular from historians. Previous studies, carried out by doctoral students of medicine, primarily focussed on the topics of disputations. These studies were also essentially limited to those disputations in which a student defended his theses to obtain a degree. This was not, however, the only motivation for scholars to dispute in public. Debates were often undertaken as practice – students could improve their rhetorical skills before they moved on to obtaining their degree. Professors who had obtained their doctoral degree at a foreign institution and wanted to work or teach in Basel also had to defend theses in public.
The seemingly dry documents reveal much more information than just the topics discussed in the sixteenth century. A close study of these disputations reveals details about the methods of teaching, the organisation, and the reasons why professors attended medical disputations. Some visitors even used the broadsheets for their own academic purposes – either to take notes or to prepare their arguments.