20 | Mass Media and Historical Change
been superseded by paper, which was available at a considerably lower cost
(Neddermeyer 1998: 291–307). The flourishing of universities, the expansion
of urban administration, and the increasing effort to create a legal norm were
all connected to this development. In Germany, text production was carried
out to a large extent by monks, nuns, and secular clergy. Given that their
share of the population was on the increase, this, too, marked an important
precondition.
Also supporting the argument for a long-term process is the circumstance
that handwritten and printed books continued to be co-produced for some
centuries after Gutenberg’s invention, underlining the ‘coexistence and coop-
eration’ of old and new media (Schanze 2001: 300; Dicke and Grubmüller
2003). In contemporary perception, this transitional phase also manifested
itself as a ‘process-like occurrence’ (Ott 1999: 176). Printing clearly domi-
nated the book-manufacturing business in Germany, France and Italy around
1500, but news, at least, continued to be distributed in handwritten form.
This smooth transition was also reflected in text forms and modes of commu-
nication up to the beginning of the sixteenth century: content, style, paper,
font, reception and price levels only changed gradually in the time prior to
Gutenberg and after (Eisermann 2003: 307–9; Neddermeyer 1998: 24). Even
the sales market reveals this continuity: movable type printing was able to meet
the demands of the established market. However, a certain overproduction was
recorded, leading to a price slump in the second half of the fifteenth century,
which in turn made the medium affordable to the broader masses.
Assigning the printing press to a long-term period of change also appears
plausible if one relates it to other inventions of the time. Media scholar Werner
Faulstich thus argues that, from a media perspective, the dawn of the Modern
Era should be dated to the early fifteenth century when various innovations
coincided. For even in the decades around 1400, paper making and paper
mills as well as print making and block books began to spread. Subsequently,
scriptoria, where texts were produced on demand, and the expansion of the
postal service, initiated in particular by Franz von Taxis in 1490, followed.
From this, Faulstich perceives a change in dominance, shifting from that of
Mensch-Medien (human media) to that of new print media: from storyteller
to pamphlet, and from herald to diplomat (Faulstich 2006a: 121, 139). The
process-like nature of these phenomena can further be highlighted by taking a
more European view. After its development in China, the art of paper making
reached Spain as early as the twelfth century via the Arabs. In the following
century, the practice also spread to Italy, whose use of paper-making factories
in this period has been substantiated.
Moreover, the age of printing in Europe as well was marked not by the
printed word but rather by the printed image. Woodcut can be traced back to
the early fifteenth century in Germany. Thus this was not only the beginning