The Breakthrough of Typographic Printing | 35Doubtless, the change in religious communication cannot be ascribed
merely to Luther or any other great reformer. The Church quickly embraced
new media technology in the first centuries after the invention of printing,
whether for religious interaction, such as the printing of indulgence letters, or
reform efforts, such as the Council of Basel (Eisermann 2002: 305; Giesecke
1991: 229, 273–76). Prior to Luther, eighteen printed copies of the Bible in
the German language were already in existence, making use of the new media
potential despite the poor translation (Füssel 1999: 110). At the end of the
fifteenth century, moreover, and before Luther’s achievement, a wave of piety
surfaced and proved to be quite media compatible. This included, for instance,
the increase in devotions, foundations and pilgrimages; the trade with devo-
tional articles; and the indulgence system. Because of this, devotional books
and images reached high circulation figures even before the Reformation
(Lottes 1996: 249; Beyer 1994: 78).
Nevertheless, the media expansion accompanying the Reformation in
the German Reich had thitherto been unparalleled. Book production rose in
1517 and peaked in 1523, when chapbooks, too, had an immense circulation.
Hans-Joachim Köhler has calculated that eleven thousand prints were pro-
duced between 1520 and 1526 alone, with circulation revolving around eleven
million copies, keeping in mind that the population of the Reich amounted
to approximately twelve million people (Köhler 1986: 250, 266; overview in
Mörke 2005: 130–35). Luther himself contributed significantly. For besides
his Bible translation, he was by far the most successful author of his time. As
many as 219 chapbooks are attributed to him, and around a hundred thou-
sand copies of his small Catechism were printed up to 1563. The Reformation
also encouraged laymen to take a stand in print, and not least, the media
triggered a Europe-wide discussion: for one, Reformation writings found their
way to foreign countries, and this, in turn, generated the production of refuta-
tions (Gilmont 1998). Even the public libricide of Luther’s writings, reaching
from London to Poland, was part of this media event (see Raymond 2003:
13; Kawecka-Gryczowa and Tazbur 1998: 424). Thus, Wittenberg – and
not Mainz – has pointedly been declared as the actual origin of the ‘Guten-
berg-Galaxy’ (Weyrauch 1995: 2).
To what extent did Luther intend a medial ‘mass mobilisation’ against the
Roman Catholic Church? Firstly, it is striking that Luther did not compose
leaflets, even though they would have reached a notably larger audience.
Instead, his chapbooks chiefly addressed the educated people. However, these
texts were in turn simplified and tailored to popular culture by other authors,
particularly from Nuremberg, and partially distributed free of cost for pro-
paganda purposes (Heintzel 1998: 215). Another objection that has been
articulated is the opinion that Luther’s chapbooks were not always as polemi-
cally persuasive as his famous Peasants’ War writing, ‘Against the Murderous,