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How Luther invented mass media

How Luther invented mass media

Last updated on: May 24, 2016 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

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How Luther invented mass media 2016-05-23T22:01:50-04:00 Gene Veith

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Media historian Andrew Pettegree has written a new book entitled Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe—and Started the Protestant Reformation.

He tells about how Luther, along with his collaborator the artist and printer LUCAS CRANACH, used the printing press in such a way that the Reformation went viral. He shows how the two used visual design to, in effect, “brand” the publications. Luther became the most published author ever, though, in the words of reviewer Ronald K. Rittgers, “he never made a pfennig from his publications.”

Of Luther’s writing style, Rittgers writes, “Unlike the typical theology books of his day, Luther’s early works were clear, engaging, entertaining, and accessible (he frequently wrote in German). And above all, they were brief.”

This is a book I want to read. The review is excerpted and linked to after the jump, and I have links to Amazon.

From Ronald K. Rittgers, How the branding of Luther’s theology fueled the Reformation | The Christian Century:

Drawing on his expertise in the history of printing and the book, Pettegree offers a novel approach to the story of Martin Luther and the Lutheran Reformation. The connection between printing and the advent of Protestantism is old news, but Pettegree breathes new life into the topic by demonstrating how deeply involved Luther was in the design and production of his printed works, how deliberate he was about promoting the print industry in Wittenberg and elsewhere, and how printers contributed directly to the astonishing success of Protestantism by promoting “Brand Luther”—the distinctive look of Protestant publications.

Pettegree stresses that no one could have predicted this success in the opening decades of the 16th century. Luther was an unknown and unpublished monk-professor who worked at a minor university in a backwater town that did not even have a printing press until 1502. This press produced an unremarkable number of Latin books each year for the town’s scholars. All of this changed with the advent of Brand Luther.

In the midst of his theological spat with church authorities over indulgences, Luther developed a new form of theological writing that gave him unprecedented fame, revolutionized the print industry of his day, and catapulted Wittenberg to the center of the early modern print world. Beginning with hisSermon on Indulgences and Grace (1518), the Wittenberg monk-professor demonstrated an uncanny knack for writing theology in a way that appealed to the literate masses. Unlike the typical theology books of his day, Luther’s early works were clear, engaging, entertaining, and accessible (he frequently wrote in German). And above all, they were brief.

But there was more to Brand Luther than Luther’s new form of theological writing. The famous German artist Lucas Cranach, who also resided in Wittenberg, played a key role in revolutionizing the look of the evangelical pamphlet. Cranach had a monopoly on the production of illustrative and decorative woodcuts in Wittenberg, and he used this monopoly to create inexpensive but distinctive title pages for Luther’s pamphlets. The display of such artwork on title pages had previously been reserved for larger and more expensive books. The detailed and attractive artwork framed the title of the work along with the names Luther and Wittenberg, which were always placed in a prominent position within the frame. It was this new look, coupled with Luther’s new kind of theological writing, that formed Brand Luther.

Luther and Cranach’s early modern marketing campaign was a huge success. The inexpensive new evangelical pamphlets sold at astonishing levels. Pettegree states that German printers produced some 4 million copies of various works between 1520 and 1525, the heyday of the evangelical pamphlet. Luther was by far the most popular author, outstripping all others by a factor of ten and his opponents by a factor of 30, and his works of devotion were easily the most popular of his many publications. Printers grew rich off of this trade, and those outside Wittenberg copied Cranach’s title pages, in some cases retaining the name Wittenberg regardless of where the work was actually produced.

Luther welcomed new printers to Wittenberg and developed a very close working relationship with them, specifying exactly which printer he wanted to produce which work, and how each work should look. As Pettegree observes, Luther understood the “aesthetics of the book.” He did not, however, understand—or value—the economics of the book. Luther never made a pfennig from his publications.

After examining the early years of the Reformation, Pettegree explores the role printers played in the spread and institutionalization of Lutheranism through their production of church orders, hymnals, Bibles, commentaries, and catechisms. During his lifetime Luther sought to influence much of this production from his perch in Wittenberg, hoping thereby to exercise a kind of quality control over the Reformation’s founding documents. In this he was largely successful. By the end of the 16th century, Luther had become the most published person in Western history, Wittenberg had become a major center of printing in the German lands, and the Protestant Reformation had become a permanent reality.

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