Munich book trade 1500–1850

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Munich's book trade 1500–1850 was determined by six concessions approved by the city, "book trade fair ". The release of the development by razing the city walls in the 1770s and the subsequent industrialization, such as the relocation of the University of Ingolstadt to Munich , led to an enormous growth spurt in the middle of the 19th century (the various cities of the empire made similar developments). A much more complex “modern” history of the book trade and publishing industry , which one can no longer grasp with a clear genealogy , begins with the first decades of the 19th century and suggests a chronological cut here.

Business basis: Book trade in concessions

The first print shop opened in Munich in 1500 - the city granted the concession to Johann Schobser from Augsburg. As was customary in the early modern period, the business included a printing, publishing and bookstore in one. Booksellers printed standardized, mass-produced goods for domestic sale, mainly works for religious edification for the common urban public; larger, in particular scientific, publications were also printed for supraregional trade. Rational print runs were between 500 and 1,000 copies. If a bookstore published a dozen such works a year, it would expand its range, the “range”, by exchanging books with colleagues from other cities. The book fairs in Frankfurt and Leipzig were the central exchange markets in the Reich.

In 1564 Adam Berg took over the Schobser printing company and the associated license. With the support of the Bavarian dukes Albrecht V and Wilhelm V , he got the struggling business going again. Almost 100 years after it was founded, the new owners of the first concession pushed for their business to be split. The resulting second concession remained in the family through the son-in-law.

12 years later, the city of Johannes Hertzroy from Ingolstadt approved the third concession. In 1645 family reasons also led to the division of the business. From then on, Johannes Wagner ran a bookstore with such success that he and his son-in-law were able to open a second one under this concession in 1669. Lucas Straub, on the other hand, took care of the other part of the concession after 1645, now Munich's fourth book retailer, with a pure printing business.

In 1698 the widow von Geldern, heiress of the two bookstores that had emerged from the former Wagner'schen Gerechtsamen, petitioned the city to grant her assistant Johannes Hibler a license of his own. A symptomatic war of files broke out: Rauch and Jäcklin defended themselves against the request. According to their argumentation, the widow's only concern was to usurp the monopoly on the spot through a third shop under her control. The city granted Hibler's request, but limited his business to the sale of "small books". Apparently there was still potential for growth in the book trade. A little later, von Geldern's widow was the first to complain to the city that Hibler was selling far more than the goods that were allowed to him. Munich now had five bookstores, two of which had their own publishing house, as well as the Lucas Straubs printing and publishing business. Several companies traded with stitches and cards. The bookbinding trade also had its own shops. In 1751 the sixth book trade fair opened. Munich only grew into a major book and publishing city at the turn of the 20th century.

The briefly outlined story is typical of the early modern book trade . The cities, protected by huge fortifications and, not least because of this, restricted in their growth opportunities, did not allow a free market. Those who already held concessions in a trade made sure that the authorities protected them from competition. Urban trade was almost as restricted in its development opportunities under the conditions of the concession as under the guild system of the Middle Ages. Businesses were founded almost exclusively within the genealogical structure, in which the concessions and the business were passed on from the concession holders to their surviving dependents - widows, sons, and daughters. An outside applicant was rarely allowed to open a new business. It was just as seldom that an applicant succeeded in acquiring an orphaned "righteous woman" together with a business that had not been heirs. Usually you got to a bookstore in a foreign city by marrying into it. Concessions were often split and differentiated - for example, when a business owner wanted to allow a son-in-law to run his own business. In such cases, the competitors insisted that when the concession was split up, only limited competitive companies emerged: A legal entity that allowed the sale, printing and publishing of books could be split up into a legal entity that ran a shop for this purpose - a pure sales business - licensed, and one under which the printing and publishing house continued to exist. The book trade grew and subsequently differentiated itself in the genealogical structure.

Insights into retail

The density of shops allows only limited conclusions to be drawn about the city's book consumption and its development. 20,000 inhabitants lived in the walled city area, a further 20,000 in the settlements outside the city, which remained unprotected and mainly housed the day laborers. The households formed a stable group of customers - reading skills were widespread and every form of bourgeois management also required writing skills. The surrounding area was added as a sales area. Business was ruled by theology until the middle of the 18th century. One read edifying writings, histories of saints, prayer books, where at the end of the 18th century one switched to poetry and novels (for more details see the article literature ). Demand for scientific theology was added by the Catholic colleges and schools. In addition, two newspapers were published in Munich into the 18th century: The first appeared under the title Ordinari Weekly Newspaper , with the postman in the title, in the first publishing license. The second sheet, Mercurii Relation, or Rechts Ordinari Zeitung with the Mercur in the title, was the somewhat larger sheet and was founded by Johannes Jäcklin. If both sheets were printed in editions of around 1,000 copies, then the entire city could be covered in their households.

In the larger perspective of the German book trade, Munich shared the same fate with other important Catholic cities. The Counter-Reformation aggravated the confessionalization of the book trade, a rift arose with different book offers between the Protestant and the Catholic cities. The gap widened when bookshops in the Protestant areas opened up to European fashions in the 17th century. The southern German Catholic book trade hardly did that. In the course of the 17th century, as a consequence of both developments, Munich books could hardly be bartered at the trade fairs in Frankfurt and Leipzig. The Protestant publishers had no need for theological scientific literature, for which they would have had to exchange sought-after Protestant university publications and the fashionable goods of the belles lettres that would soon be even more coveted by European standards. Munich's booksellers said goodbye to trade in trade fairs one after the other. Their offer was provincial. Business relationships with colleagues in Ingolstadt came into question in order to be able to offer a broader range of products in Munich; greater variety did not bring that into the shops.

The situation improved in the 1760s, when barter in supraregional trade ceased and Munich booksellers were able to purchase cash on the supraregional book market, which they could sell in Munich on supraregional goods at a profit for cash.

Outlook on the 19th and 20th centuries

In the middle of the 1770s, the decision was made to tear down Munich's city walls. The development in the immediate vicinity, which was previously blocked because a field of fire had to be kept for cannonades, began with the expansion to Schwabing and to the east across the Isar. The Au was previously part of the Wolfratshausen judicial district (and thus withdrawn from municipal jurisdiction), the largest settlement in the run-up to Munich. Their incorporation followed like the expansion to the Ostbahnhof. The university was brought from Ingolstadt to Munich - the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich was founded in 1824, and the Technical University of Munich in 1868 . The demand for books increased rapidly. The industrialization was Munich from mid-19th century massive increase. The book trade organized itself on the free market, which no longer allows a simple genealogy of the shops to be sketched.

Overview: The publishers and their business ties 1500–1850

The binding of the shops to individual concessions makes it possible to record the trade in a kind of family tree as a genealogy and to assign names that can be found on the title pages of books to the individual shops. A detailed commentary can be found on the following website A Genealogy of the Munich “Book Trade Gerechtsamen” , the illustration first appeared in Simons and has been approved by the author for further use.

Adam Berg

References

  1. ↑ In the Jäcklinschen Gerechtsamen from the files of the Munich trade concessions there is an inventory of stocks in the “vault” from which the circulation figures can be read off.
  2. ^ Constanze Huhn: Database: European history. Source autopsy - Martin Schrot, Wappenbuch 1576. ( Memento from October 1, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (includes a short biography of Adam Berg)
  3. ^ Lit .: Simons, 2001, p. 26

literature

  • Data from: Pius Dirr , books and literature in old Munich. 1450-1800 (Munich 1929).
  • Olaf Simons: Marteaus Europa or The Novel Before It Became Literature (Amsterdam / Atlanta: Rodopi, 2001), p. 26 f, ISBN 90-420-1226-9

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