Johann Gutenberg: The Man and his Invention (review)

200 Reviews offering the fullest analysis to date of later Germanic pagan and Christian marriage. While as a social history it must stand beside the work of P. Quennell or R. I. Page, its probing of the nuances of so many 'ancilliary' prose texts in their (passing) references to w o m e n more than challenges Gronbech's scholarship about Germanic men. Perhaps its stature is best defined as akin to that of E. O. G. Turville-Petre in his similarly meticulous work at mid-century on Icelandic churchmen, saga-steads and male politicking. J. S. Ryan Department of English University of N e w England Kapr, Albert, Johann Gutenberg: The Man and his Invention, trans. Douglas Martin, Aldershot, Scolar Press, 1996; cloth; pp. 317; 88 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £29.50, AUS$71.00. Shortly before his death in 1995, Kapr prepared this third, revised edition of his successful biography, Johannes Gutenberg: Persbnlichkeit und Leistung, especially for the translator. The result is a valuable addition to the scant material in English on the Rhenish inventor of printing with movable type. It is as thorough a study as one could make of the elusive Gutenburg, for w h o m the historical sources are so pitifully scant, and may serve as something of a corrective in those Anglo-Saxon lands where the impression often reigns that printing really began with Caxton. Kapr's perspective is privileged by his original training. Though an academic by inclination and later by profession—he was for some years Rektor of the Hochschule fur Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig—he remained first and foremost a typographer and book designer, and is therefore much better able than many a 'mere' historian to assess the sort of evidence upon which any detailed examination of Gutenberg's life must depend. Compared to the near-silence of the usual historical records, the evidence of Gutenberg's printed products is voluble. From it Kapr is able to follow the destiny of each of the fonts cast by Gutenberg, showing which works they were used for, in many cases even establishing a relative chronology for them from the apparent wear on the type, and then to draw conclusions about where the books were printed. H e acknowledges the inventor's phenomenal organisational feat in bringing together so many different people and different human skills to succeed in a capital-intensive venture needing years Reviews 201 to bring a return—and that in a strife-torn, politically unstable city. But it is the typographer who speaks once again when Kapr declares that Gutenberg's greatest achievement remained the technical invention of the hand-mould. This intricate wooden device, into the base of which the copper matrices were fixed, allowed an expert founder to cast with relative speed large numbers of characters of varying width, using an alloy of lead, tin and antimony. The idea of printing with separate characters itself may, as Kapr points out, have been inspired by comparable processes known centuries before in the far East. But the large quantities of type produced by this little hand-held device, and their application in a simple but strong press modified from the winepresses of his homeland, was what made the printing of the bible in an edition of some hundreds a commercially viable proposition. Such was Gutenberg's aim, and the means were purely his invention. As a man, Gutenberg remains largely an enigma; there is little that betrays his personality. But the exacting attention to detail and aesthetic considerations in hisfinestachievement, the 42-line bible, shows that his aim was that the new printed books should in no wise be lesser cousins to the fine manuscripts of his time. And despite the immeasurable commercial potential of his invention, he was a m a n to w h o m religion seemingly meant more than monetary profit. B o m into a well-to-do patrician family in Mainz, he probably studied at the University of Erfurt. But then, these privileged beginnings notwithstanding, he quite early, for no known reason and in circumstances unknown, acquired advanced skills in metal-working— artisans came later to his printing house specifically...