The Breakthrough of Typographic Printing | 19argued that Asian book manufacturing should not be described by the same
terms that are applied to Gutenberg’s procedure (Giesecke 2007: 400–404).
At the very least, however, one must recognise that there are two separate paths
of mediatisation which only merged slowly over time by means of cultural
encounters, initiated mainly – in the book business – by missionaries. The fact
that the Gutenberg Bible and the Korean Jikji have been exhibited alongside
each other during the past few years suggests that these differing paths to a
media society are increasingly attracting public attention (Engels 2003).
A Media Revolution? The Dissemination of Gutenberg’s Invention
In comparison to the evolutionary development in Asia, which spanned over
one thousand years, Gutenberg’s invention emerged rather suddenly. The
introduction of movable type printing has accordingly been conceived of as
a media revolution (Eisenstein [1979] 2005), and on the basis of Marshall
McLuhan’s work, the belief in the power of new media technology to change
society has been emphasised (McLuhan [1962] 2011; Giesecke 1991). Since
1540, Gutenberg’s invention has been celebrated every one hundred years; at
first with poems of praise, and then in the nineteenth century with elaborate
performances (Estermann 1999). Whether it is to be regarded as a revolution
in the sense of a sudden upheaval, however, has been a matter of controversy
among academics. Today there is a tendency, particularly in historical studies,
to classify Gutenberg’s printing practice as a long-term change, because its
potential for innovation during its first few centuries did not unfold to the
extent that the term ‘revolution’ suggests. Uwe Neddermeyer thus concludes
in his extensive study on the development from handwriting to book printing
that, in regard to Gutenberg’s invention, no strong transformation or break in
the history of the book can be detected in respect of either contents and design
or recipients and reception. He refers to it rather as the trigger for a consider-
able acceleration phase within a longer period (Neddermeyer 1998: 552; also
Eisermann 2003: 307; Schanze 1999). Even the American historian Elizabeth
L. Eisenstein, in the new edition of her classic work on ‘print revolution’, refers
to it as a ‘long revolution’ taking place between 1450 and 1470 (Eisenstein
2005: 335; on the debate on Eisenstein, cf. Baron et al. 2007).
Several observations reinforce the classification of Gutenberg’s invention as
a long-term process. A crucial sign is the quantitative rise in book production
in the Middle Ages, which can be observed in Germany, Italy, France and
England in roughly the same period. After this first peak in the thirteenth
century, another considerable increase in book production followed around
1370, shortly after the Black Death had subsided; for parchment had now