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How does the printing press work?

Why is the printing press important, when was the printing press invented.

• What did Johannes Gutenberg do to change the world?

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Printing presses push paper against inked movable type materials to transfer text and images from the type onto the paper. Medieval presses used a handle to turn a wooden screw that moved the platen on which the paper was mounted; the platen squeezed the paper against the type, which was locked in place in a frame, or form. Metal presses, developed late in the 18th century, used steam to drive a cylinder press . Flatbed presses , emerging early in the 19th century, used flat beds to hold the type and either a reciprocating platen or a cylinder to hold paper.

The printing press is a useful tool for communicating and disseminating ideas on paper quickly and at a large scale. Before the advent of radio , television , the Internet , and other forms of mass media, printed materials (such as treatises, books , bulletins, newspapers , and magazines ) were used to share ideas quickly and efficiently for the purposes of informing large numbers of people about current events, business opportunities, and cultural and religious practices and for educational purposes.

Movable type and paper were invented in China, and printing with movable type was undertaken in Korea by the 14th century, if not earlier. The printing press first became mechanized in Europe. The earliest mention of a printing press in Europe appears in a lawsuit in Strasbourg in 1439. It reveals construction of a press for Johannes Gutenberg and his associates. The earliest European printing presses owed much to the medieval paper press, which was in turn modeled after the ancient wine-and-olive press of the Mediterranean area.

printing press , machine by which text and images are transferred from movable type to paper or other media by means of ink . Movable type and paper were invented in China, and the oldest known extant book printed from movable type was created in Korea in the 14th century. Printing first became mechanized in Europe during the 15th century.

The earliest mention of a mechanized printing press in Europe appears in a lawsuit in Strasbourg in 1439; it reveals construction of a press for Johannes Gutenberg and his associates. Gutenberg’s press and others of its era in Europe owed much to the medieval paper press, which was in turn modeled after the ancient wine-and-olive press of the Mediterranean area. A long handle was used to turn a heavy wooden screw, exerting downward pressure against the paper, which was laid over the type mounted on a wooden platen. Gutenberg used his press to print an edition of the Bible in 1455 ; this Bible is the first complete extant book in the West, and it is one of the earliest books printed from movable type. ( Jikji , a book of the teachings of Buddhist priests , was printed by hand from movable type in Korea in 1377.) In its essentials, the wooden press used by Gutenberg reigned supreme for more than 300 years, with a hardly varying rate of 250 sheets per hour printed on one side.

Metal presses began to appear late in the 18th century, at about which time the advantages of the cylinder were first perceived and the application of steam power was considered. By the mid-19th century Richard M. Hoe of New York had perfected a power-driven cylinder press in which a large central cylinder carrying the type successively printed on the paper of four impression cylinders, producing 8,000 sheets an hour in 2,000 revolutions. The rotary press came to dominate the high-speed newspaper field, but the flatbed press , having a flat bed to hold the type and either a reciprocating platen or a cylinder to hold the paper, continued to be used for job printing.

A significant innovation of the late 19th century was the offset press , in which the printing (blanket) cylinder runs continuously in one direction while paper is impressed against it by an impression cylinder. Offset printing is especially valuable for colour printing , because an offset press can print multiple colours in one run. Offset lithography —used for books, newspapers, magazines, business forms, and direct mail—continued to be the most widely used printing method at the start of the 21st century, though it was challenged by ink-jet, laser, and other printing methods.

Apart from the introduction of electric power , advances in press design between 1900 and the 1950s consisted of a great number of relatively minor mechanical modifications designed to improve the speed of the operation. Among these changes were better paper feed, improvements in plates and paper, automatic paper reels, and photoelectric control of colour register. The introduction of computers in the 1950s revolutionized printing composition , with more and more steps in the print process being replaced by digital data. At the end of the 20th century a new electronic printing method, print-on-demand, began to compete with offset printing, though it—and printing generally—came under increasing pressure in developed countries as publishers, newspapers, and others turned to online means of distributing what they had previously printed on paper.

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Printing Press

By: History.com Editors

Updated: May 14, 2024 | Original: May 7, 2018

The printing press is a device that allows for the mass production of uniform printed matter, mainly text in the form of books, pamphlets and newspapers. Created in China, the printing press revolutionized society there before being further developed in Europe in the 15th Century by Johannes Gutenberg and his invention of the Gutenberg press.

When Was the Printing Press Invented?

No one knows when the first printing press was invented or who invented it, but the oldest known printed text originated in China during the first millennium A.D.

The Diamond Sutra , a Buddhist book from Dunhuang, China from around 868 A.D. during the Tang Dynasty , is said to be the oldest known printed book.

The Diamond Sutra was created with a method known as block printing, which utilized panels of hand-carved wood blocks in reverse.

Some other texts have survived from Dunhuang as well, including a printed calendar from around A.D. 877, mathematic charts, a vocabulary guide, etiquette instruction, funeral and wedding guides, children’s educational material, dictionaries and almanacs.

It was during this period of early printing that rolled-up scrolls began to be replaced by book-formatted texts. Woodblock printing was also used in Japan and Korea at the time, and metal block printing was also developed at some point during that period, typically for Buddhist and Taoist texts.

Moveable type, which replaced panels of printing blocks with moveable individual characters that could be reused, was developed by Bi Sheng, from Yingshan, Hubei, China, who lived roughly from 970 to 1051 A.D.

The first moveable type was carved into clay and baked into hard blocks that were then arranged onto an iron frame that was pressed against an iron plate.

The earliest mention of Bi Sheng’s printing press is in the book Dream Pool Essays , written in 1086 by scientist Shen Kuo, who noted that his nephews came into possession of Bi Sheng’s typefaces after his death.

Shen Kuo explained that Bi Sheng did not use wood because the texture is inconsistent and absorbs moisture too easily, and also presents a problem of sticking in the ink. The baked clay cleaned-up better for reuse.

By the time of the Southern Song Dynasty, which ruled from 1127 to 1279 A.D., books had become prevalent in society and helped create a scholarly class of citizens who had the capabilities to become civil servants. Massive printed book collections also became a status symbol for the wealthy class.

Woodtype made a comeback in 1297 when Ching-te magistrate Wang Chen printed a treatise on agriculture and farming practices called Nung Shu .

Wang Chen devised a process to make the wood more durable and precise. He then created a revolving table for typesetters to organize with more efficiency, which led to greater speed in printing.

Nung Shu is considered the world’s first mass-produced book. It was exported to Europe and, coincidentally, documented many Chinese inventions that have been traditionally attributed to Europeans.

Wang Chen’s method of woodblock type continued to be used by printers in China.

Johannes Gutenberg

In Europe, the printing press did not appear until 150 years after Wang Chen’s innovation. Goldsmith and inventor Johannes Gutenberg was a political exile from Mainz, Germany when he began experimenting with printing in Strasbourg (then part of the Holy Roman Empire) in 1440. He returned to Mainz several years later and by 1450, had a printing machine perfected and ready to use commercially: The Gutenberg press.

Gutenberg Press

Integral to Gutenberg’s design was replacing wood with metal and printing blocks with each letter, creating the European version of moveable type.

In order to make the type available in large quantities and to different stages of printing, Gutenberg applied the concept of replica casting, which saw letters created in reverse in brass and then replicas made from these molds by pouring molten lead.

Researchers have speculated that Gutenberg actually used a sand-casting system that uses carved sand to create the metal molds. The letters were fashioned to fit together uniformly to create level lines of letters and consistent columns on flat media.

Gutenberg’s process would not have worked as seamlessly as it did if he had not made his own ink, devised to affix to metal rather than wood. Gutenberg was also able to perfect a method for flattening printing paper for use by using a winepress, traditionally used to press grapes for wine and olives for oil, retrofitted into his printing press design.

Gutenberg Bible

Gutenberg borrowed money from Johannes Fust to fund his project and in 1452, Fust joined Gutenberg as a partner to create books. They set about printing calendars, pamphlets and other ephemera.

In 1452, Gutenberg produced the one book to come out of his shop: a Bible . It’s estimated he printed 180 copies of the 1,300-paged Gutenberg Bible , as many as 60 of them on vellum. Each page of the Bible contained 42 lines of text in Gothic type, with double columns and featuring some letters in color.

For the Bible, Gutenberg used 300 separate molded letter blocks and 50,000 sheets of paper. Many fragments of the books survive. There are 21 complete copies of the Gutenberg Bible, and four complete copies of the vellum version.

Gutenberg’s Later Years

In 1455, Fust foreclosed on Gutenberg. In an ensuing lawsuit, all of Gutenberg’s equipment went to Fust and Peter Schoffer of Gernsheim, Germany, a former calligrapher.

Gutenberg is believed to have continued printing, probably producing an edition of the Catholicon , a Latin dictionary, in 1460. But Gutenberg ceased any efforts at printing after 1460, possibly due to impaired vision. He died in 1468.

Peter Schoffer

Schoffer made use of Gutenberg’s press as soon as it was acquired, and he is considered to be a technically better printer and typographer than Gutenberg. Within two years of seizing Gutenberg’s press, he produced an acclaimed version of The Book of Psalms that featured a three-color title page and varying types within the book.

One notable detail about this edition is the inclusion of a colophon for the very first time in history. A colophon is the section of a book that details publication information. Ten copies of this edition of The Book of Psalms are known to still exist.

Printing Spreads Through Europe

The spread of printing as a trade benefited from workers in Germany who had helped Gutenberg in his early printing experiments and then went on to become printers who taught the trade to others.

After Germany, Italy became the next recipient of Gutenberg’s invention when the printing press was brought to the country in 1465. By 1470, Italian printers began to make a successful trade in printed matter.

German printers were invited to set up presses at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1470, and the librarian there chose books to be printed, mostly textbooks, for the students. By 1476, other German printers had moved to Paris and set up private companies.

Spain welcomed German printers in 1473 in Valencia, spreading to Barcelona in 1475. In 1495, Portugal invited printers to Lisbon.

Gutenberg’s invention was brought to England in 1476 by William Caxton, an Englishman who had lived in Bruges, in what is now Belgium, for years. Caxton went to Cologne to learn to print in 1471 in order to set up a press in Bruges and publish his own translations of various works.

After returning to England, he set up a press in Westminster Abbey , where he worked as a printer for the monarchy until his death in 1491.

Printing Press Changes the World

The worldwide spread of the printing press meant a greater distribution of ideas that threatened the ironclad power structures of Europe.

In 1501, Pope Alexander VI promised excommunication for anyone who printed manuscripts without the church’s approval. Twenty years later, books from John Calvin and Martin Luther spread, bringing into reality what Alexander had feared.

Furthering that threat, Copernicus published his On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres , which was seen as heresy by the church.

By 1605, the first official newspaper, Relation , was printed and distributed in Strasbourg. Newspapers appeared all across Europe, formalizing the printing press’ contribution to the growth of literacy, education and the far-reaching availability of uniform information for ordinary people.

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The Invention of Printing. Theodore Low De Vinne . 500 Years of Printing. S.H. Steinberg . Printer’s Error: An Irreverent History of Books. Rebecca Romney . Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Paper and Printing. Joseph Needham, Tsien Tsuen-Hsuin . Cambridge Illustrated History of China. Patricia Buckley Ebrey .

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The Printing Revolution in Renaissance Europe

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The arrival in Europe of the printing press with moveable metal type in the 1450s CE was an event which had enormous and long-lasting consequences. The German printer Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1398-1468 CE) is widely credited with the innovation and he famously printed an edition of the Bible in 1456 CE. Beginning with religious works and textbooks, soon presses were churning out all manner of texts from Reformation pamphlets to romantic novels. The number of books greatly increased, their cost diminished and so more people read than ever before. Ideas were transmitted across Europe as scholars published their own works, commentaries on ancient texts, and criticism of each other. Authorities like the Catholic Church took exception to some books and censored or even burned them, but the public's attitude to books and reading was by then already changed forever.

The impact of the printing press in Europe included:

• A huge increase in the volume of books produced compared to handmade works.
• An increase in the access to books in terms of physical availability and lower cost.
• More authors were published, including unknown writers.
• A successful author could now earn a living solely through writing .
• An increase in the use and standardisation of the vernacular as opposed to Latin in books.
• An increase in literacy rates.
• The rapid spread of ideas concerning religion , history, science , poetry, art, and daily life.
• An increase in the accuracy of ancient canonical texts.
• Movements could now be easily organised by leaders who had no physical contact with their followers.
• The creation of public libraries.
• The censorship of books by concerned authorities.

Johannes Gutenberg

The invention of the movable metal type printer in Europe is usually credited to the German printer Johannes Gutenberg. However, there are other claims, notably the Dutch printer Laurens Janszoon Coster (c. 1370-1440 CE) and two other early German printers, Johann Fust (c. 1400-1465 CE) and his son-in- law Peter Schöffer (c. 1425-1502 CE). There is, too, evidence that movable metal type printers had already been invented in Korea in 1234 CE in the Goryeo Kingdom (918-1392 CE). Chinese Buddhist scholars also printed religious works using moveable type presses; the earliest ones used woodblocks during the Song Dynasty (960-1279 CE). Whether the idea of moveable type presses spread via merchants and travellers from Asia to Europe or if the invention by Gutenberg was spontaneous is still a point of debate amongst scholars. In any case, like most technologies in history, the invention likely sprang from a cumulation of elements, ideas, and necessity involving multiple individuals across time and space.

Gutenberg began his printing experiments sometime in the 1440s CE, and he was able to establish his printing firm in Mainz in 1450 CE. Gutenberg's printer used Gothic script letters. Each letter was made on a metal block by engraving it into the base of a copper mould and then filling the mould with molten metal. Individual blocks were arranged in a frame to create a text and then covered in a viscous ink. Next, a sheet of paper, at that time made from old linen and rags, was mechanically pressed onto the metal blocks. Gutenberg's success in putting all these elements together is indicated by his printed edition of the Latin Bible in 1456 CE.

The new type of presses soon appeared elsewhere, notably with two Germans, Arnold Pannartz (d. 1476 CE) and Conrad Sweynheym (aka Schweinheim, d. 1477 CE). This pair established their printing press in 1465 CE in the Benedictine monastery of Subiaco. It was the first such press in Italy . Pannartz and Sweynheym moved their operation to Rome in 1467 CE and then Venice in 1469 CE, which already had a long experience of printing such things as playing cards. There were still some problems such as the lack of quality compared to handmade books and the drab presentation in respect to beautifully colour-illustrated manuscripts. Also, there were sometimes errors seen in the early printed editions and these mistakes were often then repeated in later editions. However, the revolution into how and what people read had well and truly begun.

Printed Matter

There was already a well-established demand for books from the clergy and the many new universities and grammar schools which had sprung up across Europe in the late medieval period. Indeed, traditional book-makers had struggled to keep up with demand in the first half of the 15th century CE, with quality often being compromised. This demand for religious material, in particular, was one of the main driving forces behind the invention of the printing press. Scholars had access to manuscripts in private and monastic libraries, but even they struggled to find copies of many texts, and they often had to travel far and wide to get access to them. Consequently, religious works and textbooks for study would dominate the printing presses throughout the 15th century CE. It is important to remember, though, that handmade books continued to be produced long after the printing press had arrived and, as with many new technologies, there were people still convinced that the flimsy printed book would never really catch on.

The availability of things to read for people in general massively increased thanks to printing. Previously, the opportunity to read anything at all was rather limited. Ordinary folks often had little more than church notice boards to read. The printing press offered all sorts of new and exciting possibilities such as informative pamphlets, travel guides, collections of poems, romantic novels, histories of art and architecture , cooking and medicinal recipes, maps, posters, cartoons, and sheet music . Books were still not as cheap as today in terms of price compared to income, but they were only around one-eighth of the price of a handmade book. With printing matter being varied and affordable, people who could not previously do so now had a real motive to read and so literacy rates increased. Further, printed books were themselves a catalyst for literacy as works were produced that could be used to teach people how to read and write. At the end of the medieval period still only 1 in 10 people at most were able to read extended texts. With the arrival of the printing press, this figure would never be as low again.

The Spread of Information

Soon, a new boost to the quantity of printed material came with the rise of the humanist movement and its interest in reviving literature from ancient Greece and Rome. Two printers, in particular, profited from this new demand: the Frenchman Nicholas Jensen (1420-1480 CE) and the Italian Aldus Manutius (c. 1452-1515 CE). Jensen innovated with new typefaces in his printing shop in Venice, including the easy-to-read roman type ( littera antiqua / lettera antica ) and a Greek font which imitated manuscript texts. Jensen printed over 70 books in the 1470s CE, including Pliny's Natural History in 1472 CE. Some of these books had illustrations and decorations added by hand to recapture the quality of older, entirely handmade books.

Meanwhile Manutius, also operating in Venice, specialised in smaller pocket editions of classical texts and contemporary humanist authors. By 1515 CE, all major classical writers were available in print, most in multiple editions and many as collections of complete works. In addition, printed classical texts with identical multiple copies in the hands of scholars across Europe could now be easily checked for accuracy against source manuscripts. Handmade books had often perpetuated errors, omissions, and additions made by individual copyists over centuries, but now, gradually, definitive editions of classical works could be realised which were as close as possible to the ancient original. In short, printed works became both the cause and fruit of an international collective scholarship, a phenomenon which would reap rewards in many other areas from astronomy to zoology.

There was, too, a drive to print more books thanks to the Reformists who began to question the Catholic Church's interpretation of the Bible and its stranglehold on how Christians should think and worship. The Bible was one of the priorities to have translated into vernacular languages, for example German (1466 CE), Italian (1471 CE), Dutch (1477 CE), Catalan (1478 CE), and Czech (1488 CE). Reformists and humanists wrote commentaries on primary sources and argued with each other in print, thereby establishing an invisible web of knowledge and scholarship across Europe. Even the letters written between these scholars were published. As religious and academic issues raged, so the debating scholars fuelled the production of yet more printed works in a perpetuating cycle of the printed word. Ordinary folks, too, were roused by arguments presented in printed materials so that groups of like-minded individuals were able to quickly spread their ideas and organise mass movements across multiple cities such as during the German Peasants' War of 1525 CE.

There were, too, plenty of works for non-scholars. As more people began to read, so more collections of poems, novellas, and romances were printed, establishing Europe-wide trends in literature. These secular works were often written in the vernacular and not the Latin scholars then preferred. Finally, many books included a number of woodcut engravings to illustrate the text. Collections of fine prints of famous paintings, sculptures, and frescoes became very popular and helped to spread ideas in art across countries so that a painter like Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528 CE) in Germany could see what Raphael (1483-1520 CE) was up to in Italy.

A Booming Industry

As a consequence of all this demand, those printers who had survived the difficult early years were now booming. Cities across Europe began to boast their own printing firms. Places like Venice, Paris , Rome, Florence, Milan, Basel, Frankfurt, and Valencia all had well-established trade connections (important to import paper and export the final product) and so they became excellent places to produce printed material. Some of these publishers are still around today, notably the Italian company Giunti. Each year, major cities were producing 2-3,000 books every year. In the first decade of the 1500s CE, it is estimated 2 million books were printed in Europe, up to 20 million by 1550 CE, and around 150 million by 1600 CE. There were over half a million works by the Reformist Martin Luther (1483-1546 CE) printed between 1516 and 1521 CE alone. Into the 16th century CE, even small towns now had their own printing press.

Besides established authors, many publishers helped new authors (men and women ) print their works at a loss in the hope that a lucrative reprint run would finally bring in a profit. The typical print run for a first edition was around 1,000 copies although this depended on the quality of the book as editions ranged from rough paper pocket-sizes to large vellum (calfskin) folio editions for the connoisseur. The smaller size of most printed books compared to handmade volumes meant that habits of reading and storing books changed. Now a desk was no longer required to support large books and one could read anywhere. Similarly, books were no longer kept horizontally in chests but stacked vertically on shelves. There were even odd inventions like the book wheel on which several books could be kept open and easily consulted simultaneously by turning the wheel, especially useful for research scholars. As readers accumulated their books and built up impressive private collections, so many bequeathed these to their city when they died. In this way, within 50 years of the printing press' invention, public libraries were formed across Europe.

Printed works became so common, they helped enormously to establish the reputations, fame and wealth of certain writers. The Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1469-1536 CE) is perhaps the best example, one of the first authors to make a living solely through writing books. There were, though, some threats to authors and printers. One of the biggest problems was copyright infringement because it was next to impossible to control what went on beyond a particular city. Many books were copied and reprinted without permission, and the quality of these rip-offs was not always very good.

Censorship & Printing the Wrong Books

All of these developments were not welcomed by all people. The Catholic Church was particularly concerned that some printed books might lead people to doubt their local clergy or even turn away from the Church. Some of these works had been first released in manuscript form a century or more earlier but they were now enjoying a new wave of popularity thanks to printed versions. Some new works were more overtly dangerous such as those written by Reformists. For this reason, in the mid-16th century CE, lists were compiled of forbidden books. The first such list, the 1538 CE Italian Index of Prohibited Books , was issued by the Senate of Milan. The Papacy and other cities and states across Europe soon followed the practice where certain books could not be printed, read, or owned, and anyone caught doing so was, at least in theory, punished. Further measures included checking texts before they were published and the more careful issuing of licenses to printers.

Institutionalised censorship, then, became a lasting reality of publishing from the mid-16th century CE as rulers and authorities finally began to wake up to the influence of printed matter. Authorities banned certain works or even anything written by a particular author. The De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium ( On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres , 1543 CE) by the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543 CE) was added to the forbidden list for putting the Sun at the centre of the solar system instead of the Earth. The Decameron (c. 1353 CE) by the Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375 CE) was added to the list because of its vulgarity. The works of Niccolò Machiavelli were added for his political cynicism.

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The worst works singled out for censorship were burned in public displays, the most infamous being the bonfire of the 'vanities' orchestrated by Girolamo Savonarola, a Florentine Dominican friar, in 1497 CE. On the other hand, some works were eventually allowed to be published (or republished) if they were appropriately edited or had offending parts removed. Most printers did not fight this development but simply printed more of what the authorities approved of. There was certainly, though, an underground market for banned books.

Many intellectuals, too, were equally dismayed at the availability of certain texts to a wide and indiscriminate audience. The Divine Comedy (c. 1319 CE) by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321 CE) was thought by some to contain certain moral, philosophical, and scientific ideas too dangerous for non-scholars to contemplate. Similarly, some scholars lamented the challenge the vernacular language was posing to Latin, what they considered the proper form of the written word. The tide had turned already, though, and local vernaculars became more standardised thanks to editors trying to make their material more comprehensible to the greatest number of readers. An improved use of punctuation was another consequence of the printed word.

Another delicate area was instruction books. Printers produced trade manuals on anything from architecture to pottery and here again, some people, especially guilds, were not so happy that detailed information on skilled crafts - the original 'trade secrets' - could be revealed to anyone with the money to buy a book. Finally, the printed word sometimes posed a challenge to oral traditions such as the professionals who recited songs, lyrical poetry, and folk tales. On the other hand, many authors and scholars transcribed these traditions into the printed form and so preserved them for future generations up to the present day and beyond.

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Bibliography

• Blockmans, Wim & Hoppenbrouwers, Peter. Introduction to Medieval Europe 300–1500. Routledge, 2017.
• Campbell, Gordon. The Oxford Illustrated History of the Renaissance. Oxford University Press, 2019.
• Eugene F. Rice Jr. & Anthony Grafton. The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1460-1559. W. W. Norton & Company, 1994.
• Holmes, George. The Oxford History Of Medieval Europe. Oxford University Press, U.S.A., 2001.
• J. R. Hale (ed). The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of the Italian Renaissance. Thames & Hudson Ltd, 1985.
• Rundle, David. The Hutchinson Encyclopedia of the Renaissance. Hodder Arnold, 2000.
• Wyatt, Michael. The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Renaissance. Cambridge University Press, 2014.

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Article contents

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• David Bagchi David Bagchi University of Hull
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.269
• Published online: 31 August 2016

Luther had a notoriously ambivalent attitude towards what was still the new technology of the printing press. He could both praise it as God’s highest act of grace for the proclamation of God’s Word, and condemn it for its unprecedented ability to mangle the same beyond recognition. That ambivalence seems to be reflected in the judgment of modern scholarship. Some have characterized the Reformation as a paradigmatic event in the history of mass communications (a Medien- or Kommunikationsereignis ), while others have poured scorn on any reductionist attempt to attribute a complex movement to a technological advance and to posit in effect a doctrine of “Justification by Print Alone.”

The evidence in favor of some sort of correlation between the use of printing and the success of the Reformation in Germany and Switzerland is certainly formidable. Thousands of German Reformation pamphlets ( Flugschriften ) survive to this day in research libraries and other collections (with Luther’s own works predominant among them), suggesting that the Holy Roman Empire was once awash with millions of affordable little tracts in the vernacular. Contemporary opponents of the Reformation lamented the potency of cheap print for propaganda and even for agitation among “the people,” and did their best either to beat the evangelical writers through legislation or else to join them by launching their own literary campaigns. But, ubiquitous as the Reformation Flugschrift was for a comparatively short time, the long-term impact of printing on Luther’s Reformation was even more impressive, above all in the production and dissemination of Bibles and partial Bibles that used Luther’s German translation. The message of the Lutheran Reformation, with its emphasis on the proclamation of God’s Word to all, seemed to coincide perfectly with the emergence of a new medium that could, for the first time, transmit that Word to all.

Against this correlation must be set the very low literacy rate in the Holy Roman Empire in the early 16th century, which on some estimates ranged between only 5 and 10 percent. of the entire population. Even taking into account the fact that historical literacy rates are notoriously difficult to estimate, the impact of printing on the majority must have been negligible. This fact has led historians to develop more nuanced ways of understanding the early-modern communication process than simply imagining a reader sitting in front of a text. One is to recognize the “hybridity” of many publications—a pamphlet might contain labeled illustrations, or be capable of being read out aloud as a sermon, or of being sung. Luther himself published many successful hybrid works of this kind. Another is the notion of the “two-stage communication process,” by which propagandists or advertisers direct their message principally to influential, literate, opinion-formers who cascade the new ideas down. Clearly much work remains to be done in understanding how Luther’s propaganda and public opinion interacted. The fact that our present generations are living through a series of equally transformative and disruptive communications revolutions will no doubt inspire new questions as well as new insights.

• Martin Luther
• public opinion
• Reformation pamphlets
• Flugschriften
• priesthood of all believers

Printing and the Reformation: Two Views

Luther was not the first condemned heretic to write books, but he was the first to benefit from the rapid and cheap dissemination of ideas made possible by the printing press. It is significant that, at the Diet of Worms in 1521 , Luther was required to retract not his ideas but the books that contained them, and the resulting Edict made special mention of the unauthorized printing of books calculated to spread heresy. Far from putting an end to the propagation of Luther’s cause through the press, the Diet and its Edict were followed by an even more massive output of religious publishing than had gone before. The year 1520 had seen 275 editions of Luther’s works leave the presses. In 1523 , two years after Worms, that figure rose to 390. 1 Reformation literature in general, and Luther’s works in particular, transformed the German-language book market, which (again in terms of editions) quadrupled between 1518 and 1520 and almost doubled again between 1520 and 1524 . 2

It was inevitable that such an astonishing phenomenon, combined with the success of Luther’s Bible translations from 1522 , should have encouraged evangelicals to regard the coincidence of the new technology and the Reformation as providential. Luther once famously hailed printing as “the latest and greatest gift, by which God intends the work of true religion to be known throughout the world and translated into every tongue.” 3 Twelve years later, in 1542 , one of the first historians of the German Reformation, Johann Sleidan, also identified printing as a special gift from God, by which the German people would become the means of bringing the light of the gospel to the whole world. 4 More recent commentators have also been inclined to see in printing a cause—or at least a necessary precondition—of the Reformation. For Lawrence Stone (following Marshall McLuhan), both printing and the Reformation marked a shift from “image culture” to “word culture,” with a growing concentration on printed Bibles as the Word of God, at the expense of images as the book of the laity. 5 For Elizabeth Eisenstein, the Reformation was one of three revolutions brought about by the printing press. 6 For Bernd Hamm, the Reformation was a “media event.” 7 The case was put starkly by Bernd Moeller in a famous slogan: “without printing, no Reformation.” 8

Other scholars have expressed unease with what they see as a species of technological determinism, as ridiculed by A. G. Dickens’s quip about “Justification by Print Alone.” 9 The Reformation was not primarily a technological event. Moreover, low rates of literacy (probably only 5 percent in German-speaking lands) meant that, for the most part, the new faith must have come by hearing, in a range of formal and informal situations: from hedge-, street-, and saloon-bar preaching as much as from the pulpit; from public disputations and private conversations; and from plays and popular songs. 10 On this view, printing was therefore, at best, only a secondary means by which the Reformation message was conveyed. It may even be the case that Reformation historians have been misled into according the printing press more importance than it actually warrants. Estimates for the volume of 16th-century printing are extrapolated from the copies that survive in libraries. In most cases, however, these survivals are not random but have at some point been collected and preserved. There is a danger, in other words, that our perception of the 16th-century book trade and its characteristics (for instance, the popularity of Luther and Karlstadt and the relative unpopularity of Catholic authors) is simply a reflection of the natural bias of earlier collectors towards famous or favored names.

Even the apparent advantages offered by the printing press, such as the ability to produce pamphlets and broadsheets quickly and in large numbers, could be counter-productive. The temptation to rush a sure-fire bestseller into print before one’s publishing rivals was too strong for many to resist; yet a rushed, or even a pirated, print job risked distorting the very message it was supposed to carry. By 1525 , Luther was so exercised by these underhand practices that he prefaced his collection of Lenten sermons with a foreword addressed to “my dear printers, who so openly rob and steal from each another.” “I could put up with their crimes [of theft and fraud],” he admitted, “did they not corrupt and ruin my books so badly in the process. But they print them so quickly that when they come back to me I no longer recognize them: something is missing in that place; that bit has been transposed; that has not been corrected.” 11 With such careless work in mind, Luther himself could at times curse the proliferation of books through printing with as much enthusiasm as he praised it. 12 Little wonder that, the year before, he began using complex woodcut logotypes that could not easily be reproduced to identify his original publications, and thereby was one of the first authors to claim intellectual property rights. 13

Caveats about low literacy rates and the over-estimation of the impact of print on the dissemination of Protestantism were joined towards the end of the last century by a stern reassessment of the Reformation pamphlet’s value as a historical resource. Anonymous and pseudonymous pamphlets had often been taken for what they claimed to be, the expression of the fears and hopes and beliefs of “the common people,” which was only too ready to ally itself with Luther and against the financial and spiritual tyranny of Rome. 14 But now these pamphlets were treated as a propaganda ruse by educated reformists hoping to create the impression of an unstoppable groundswell of public opinion on Luther’s side. 15 As a result, historians generally ceased to regard pamphlets as offering credible evidence of popular mentalities and turned instead to the civil, legal, and ecclesiastical archives for echoes of the genuine voices of the people. 16

By the late 1980s and the early 1990s, scholarly scepticism about the role of printing for the Reformation was widespread. It is significant, for example, that the survey volume Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research II , published in 1992 , contained no chapter specifically on the subject of pamphleteering or on printing more generally. This is in telling contrast to its predecessor of ten years before, when pamphlet research was flourishing, and to its successor, published in 2008 , when the history of the book was once again in rude health. 17 This skepticism was an understandable reaction to those treatments, which too readily identified the rise of the handpress and the rise of Protestantism, or which regarded the Reformation pamphlet as representative of “popular opinion” tout simple . But a position that denies an important role to print in the dissemination of Reformation propaganda has to ignore too much evidence. Catholic authorities—civic and ecclesiastical—in the Empire and Switzerland clearly took both the effectiveness of the press and its association with heterodoxy with the utmost seriousness. Local ordinances, in support of the Edict of Worms, were issued in many cities and were strictly enforced. 18 Naturally, there were corresponding bans on unauthorized preaching, but it was recognized that the printed word had a potency and danger peculiar to it: the Catholic apologist Johann Cochlaeus pointed out that an heretical book corrupts not only its first readers, but can be picked up by an unwary soul fifty or more years later and corrupt an entirely new generation, in much the same way as Luther and his followers were misled by the writings of Wycliffe and Huss long after those heresiarchs themselves had expired. 19 These Catholic testimonies show that the reformers’ high evaluation of the importance of printing as a key factor in spreading the new teachings was shared by their opponents.

The notion that Reformation pamphlets were produced and consumed solely by a well-educated elite also seems less secure than it once did. Socially marginalized groups, like women and male manual workers, did write pamphlets, and they appealed to the characteristically Lutheran doctrine of universal priesthood to justify doing so. 20 There is evidence that pamphlets were read aloud by literate members of a community for the benefit of their unlettered colleagues. Indeed, partisans claimed that, because of the availability of pamphlets, better sermons could be heard in taverns than in churches, and in the pubs of Basel it seems that impromptu preaching out of books did take place. 21 Many pamphlets were particularly suited to this treatment, either because they were themselves the texts or summaries of sermons or else because the diction and rhythm adopted was that of spoken German, as was especially the case with Eberlin von Günzburg’s works. 22 Rather than compartmentalize the Reformation pamphlet as a literary product of and for a literate elite, we should think instead of the “hybridization” of media, whereby print (both word and image) and other visual and oral forms worked together in a completely integrated manner to convey Reformation propaganda. 23 The contents of pamphlets might be summarized in short ditties by the colporteurs who sold them, 24 or they might be communicated through woodcut illustrations accompanying the text. A good example of the latter is the thoroughly bi-medial pamphlet The Passional of Christ and Antichrist , with words by Melanchthon and Schwertfeger (though evidently inspired by Luther’s To the Christian Nobility of 1520 ) and illustrations by Cranach. The message embodied in the Reformation pamphlet was accessible by more means than literacy alone.

In the same way that our definition of 16th-century literacy is perhaps too restrictive, so our estimates of literacy may be too conservative. Edwards has argued that the very large number of pamphlets produced in the early 1520s—some six million copies for a total population of only twelve million, or twenty copies for each literate person—suggests that we have seriously underestimated the extent of literacy in the Holy Roman Empire. 25 The ready availability of worthwhile reading material would itself have been an incentive to greater literacy: Reformation publishing created a market, as well as catering for one. Evidence of extensive book ownership, and we assume of literacy, crops up in unlikely places. One would hardly expect the harsh conditions endured by the miners of the Austrian Tyrol to be conducive to reading. But we find that, in the middle of the 16th century, they owned a wide selection of theological books, in Latin as well as in German, including many of the works of Luther, Eck, and Sachs. 26 (Pettegree reminds us that book ownership does not necessarily imply literacy, citing the case of Lieven de Zomere, a Ghent baker who claimed to own many books by Luther but who took his copy of The Babylonian Captivity of the Church to a local cleric to have it read to him. Pettegree suggests that de Zomere and other illiterates might have purchased Reformation pamphlets less to read them than to buy into the excitement of the new and illicit ideas they contained. 27 That is certainly plausible; but in de Zomere’s case it might simply have been that he read Dutch and Low German but not Latin.)

Those who warn against seeing printing in general, and the pamphlet in particular, as a significant factor in the dissemination and reception of the Reformation message in the Holy Roman Empire may be guilty of too much caution. Is the same true of those historians who discount the value of pamphlets as sources for determining public opinion? Here again, it might be mistaken to assume that all pamphleteers were denizens of ivory towers, remote from the concerns of the common people, of which some falsely purported to be. Most pamphlets were published anonymously, so there is extremely little hard evidence available about the social background of those who wrote them. But, thanks to R. W. Scribner, we do have information about an analogous group. Scribner collected biographical data on 176 Protestant preachers active in Germany up to about 1550 . We can see from this that, despite their extraordinarily high standard of education, more than 40 percent of the first Reformation preachers were from rural poor, urban poor, or artisan families. 28 Many of Scribner’s preachers were also pamphleteers, and we can assume that the profiles of both groups were at least broadly similar. Such writers would have continued to share much of the outlook and interests of the class from which they had emerged, and would have felt qualified to voice the concerns of “the common man” in their writings. We should of course be wary of assuming a total community of interest: education changed perspectives and expectations then as now. But of all those in 16th century Germany who could articulate complex ideas in writing, upwardly mobile pamphleteers were indeed best qualified to represent “the common people.”

From Broadsheet to Pamphlet

The commercial success of the Reformation pamphlet was due to a number of factors: it was relatively cheap, it was a handy size, it could be produced quickly and in large numbers, and (above all) its subject matter was what the public wanted to read. But it did not appear overnight to satisfy the demands of religious controversy and persuasion. The cheap, small format book had been a familiar feature of life in France, Germany, and the Low Countries for many decades. Even before the invention of moveable metal type, saints’ lives, devotional guides for dying well, and picture bibles ( biblia pauperum praedicatorum ) had been printed from woodcuts. These continued to be produced in volume even after letterpresses became common, and of course, the woodcut remained the cheapest and most convenient means of illustrating books for two hundred years. 29

Printing from blocks had some advantages. It required no special equipment other than a block of wood, a knife, ink, and paper. But its strength lay in its facility for reproducing single sheets and relatively short books in relatively short print runs. While this did not put it at any particular disadvantage in contrast with moveable type at first, when short runs were the norm, the block printing of texts was overtaken by the newer invention after about 1460 . But it continued to serve an important purpose, not least in helping to satisfy the huge demand for devotional works in the 15th century with cheap and plentiful prints and booklets.

One reason for the eclipse of block printing by moveable type was the coarseness of the paper used in western Europe at this time. Metal type applied by screw press made a much clearer impression than woodblocks but naturally it required a deal of preparation. First, a punch in a hard metal such as steel had to be engraved for each of the characters for a particular font; these punches were then used to strike matrices in a softer metal, which could in turn be used as molds for turning out the alloy types (or sorts ) themselves. The sorts would be made up into pages and set in a rigid frame (or forme ). The forme would be turned face-up and inked (using a suitable fatty ink specially formulated to adhere to the metal) and a sheet of paper forced onto the forme by a mechanical press. The sheets could then be folded, sewn into gatherings, and, if required, bound. It was little wonder that the first printers were highly skilled workers, such as goldsmiths and moneyers, rather than enterprising block printers. The earliest printed books included veritable works of art such as the Psalter of Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer, and the 42-line Bible traditionally attributed to Johann Gutenberg; but from our point of view it is significant that, contemporaneously with these fine works, the Mainz presses were turning out more popular and ephemeral material, such as vernacular printed calendars and letters of indulgence. 30 Some sixty printing shops had been established in German-speaking lands by 1500 , to keep up with a growing demand. No doubt the growing availability of printed material helped to stimulate the growth of literacy, in 15th- and 16th-century Germany as in 17th-century England. But the invention of printing also coincided with an explosion of the German population, from around 10 million in 1470 to perhaps 20 million in 1600 . The reading public must have doubled at least during that period.

This popular end of the market included small booklets of a few, unbound pages, but was dominated by the production of single sheets, printed on one side, usually containing a woodcut in the upper portion and text (often in verse) in the lower half. These were the forerunners of the modern newspaper, and it would not be too misleading to characterize them in modern terms as broadsheet in size but tabloid in content. Typically, their subjects were reports of notable events, astrological predictions, or sensationalist reports of strange phenomena, such as deformities in new-born children or animals. Such reporting might be used to influence public opinion, by interpreting these phenomena as portents relating to contemporary political and social affairs. The court of Emperor Maximilian I routinely used broadsheets and pamphlets for propaganda purposes (for example, a child born with two heads in 1495 was portrayed by imperial publicists as representing the double-headed eagle, and as a good omen for the house of Habsburg’s power-struggle with the German princes). 31 Small format books might be the vehicle of satire, most famously the celebrated Letters of Obscure Men, which appeared in quarto, octavo, and eventually even duodecimo. 32 Alternatively, they might be put to more sinister purposes. Franciscan friars used them to embarrass their Dominican rivals over the notorious Jetzer case in Berne, which ended in death at the stake for four Dominicans in 1509 , while some of the most virulent anti-Jewish sentiments expressed in the 16th century belong to this period. 33

The Reformation Pamphlet

Definition and physical appearance.

What was a Reformation pamphlet? The most influential attempt at a definition has been that of Hans-Joachim Köhler, director of the project, which published and cataloged all copies of 16th-century pamphlets extant in the libraries of the former West Germany. He defined a pamphlet as “a self-contained, occasional, and unbound publication consisting of more than one page, addressed to the general public with the aim of agitation (that is, the influencing of events) and/or propaganda (that is, the influencing of beliefs).” 34 In physical terms, the typical pamphlet was of a handy, quarto, size (usually about 8 inches by 6 inches), and of 16 pages or fewer in length, though some ran to 80 pages or more. 35 The gatherings might be sewn, but not bound, so that the title page was also the front cover, often embellished either with a woodcut appropriate to the content, or more likely some merely decorative devices drawn from the publisher’s own stock. By the early 16th century, the convention had already been established by which Latin was normally set in roman type and German in Fraktur or “gothic” type (the distinction lasted well into the 20th century). Pamphlets in German naturally used different dialects, according to the region of the author or compositor. There was, as with the English of this period, no standardized orthography, so that the same word might be spelled in several different ways even on the same page. The text itself was often contracted or abbreviated—usually by the omission of consonants, indicated by a special mark above the preceding vowel. This was a survival from the age of the scribe in which abbreviations, especially of Latin, were heavily used to save time and, more importantly, to ensure the neat justification of the right-hand margin. Given that justified margins could now be achieved by adding metal spacers of the required width between characters and words, and that contractions, which required extra characters in every font, made the job of setting type and replacing it after use so much more cumbersome, it was surprising that the practice only gradually died out during the century. Naturally, errors were made during the process of typesetting, which required the compositor to assemble a mirror image of the required text. Mistakes could also be made when laying out the forms in the exact manner required for each format of book, so that pages might appear in the wrong order. Proofreading could catch the worst slips, and lists of corrigenda could be added to the final page, or a loose leaf might be pasted in; but cheap pamphlets generally did not warrant the extra expense involved.

Early 16th-century pamphlets are therefore crude affairs, far from the triumphs of art and craft we normally associate with early printed books. In later centuries, they were traded for their value as scrap paper rather than as reading matter. Circulated and read unbound, many must have fallen to pieces long before they could meet such a fate. The important thing about them, then as now, was not their appearance but their contents.

Literary Characteristics, Content, and Argumentation

Sixteenth-century pamphlets covered a wide variety of subjects, from cookery and books of trades to astrology and works of traditional theology and devotion. But in the 1520s, the vast bulk of pamphlets was religious in character and related to the growing demand for reform of the Church. Typically, they portrayed the Church as a corrupt institution that oppressed the consciences of the laity even as it emptied their pockets. Monks and friars were excoriated for their hypocrisy in professing poverty while amassing great wealth. Similarly, they portrayed the Pope, while arrogating to himself the title of Vicar of Christ, as preferring the pomp and circumstance of his court to the hard life of the first disciples and of their Master. They claimed that the straightforward message of the Gospel had been displaced by human inventions—canon law, scholastic theology, the cult of the saints, masses for the dead—and that the Italian-led Church had for too long exploited the proverbial slow-wittedness of the Teutons. But at last, they proclaimed, even the Germans were waking up to their misfortune. There is indeed much in the pamphlet literature of the Reformation, both in content and in tone, to remind us of the Internet age and its predilection for conspiracy theories. Balancing the negative messages, however, were positive elements, proclaiming enlightenment through the notion of the open Bible, liberation through the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and the restoration of right order by providing support and education for the poor. 36

These arguments, both positive and negative, might be presented in a number of ways. Some Flugschriften were reasoned expositions, corresponding to pamphlets in the modern sense. Far more numerous were those that adopted a sermonic style, and indeed were often straightforward transcriptions of sermons actually preached. 37 Almost as widely used was the format of the open letter, addressed to a friend or patron, but in reality intended for a much wider readership. The letter was a form much favored by humanists, in imitation of classical models. But when Luther addressed open letters to persecuted communities, his inspiration was more likely the epistles of the New Testament and the early fathers. Some evangelicals deliberately copied the style of St Paul’s letters, for instance. 38 An example is Balthasar Stanberger’s A Letter on Loving God and One’s Neighbour of 1523 , addressed to the publisher Johann Michael. Another very popular genre was the prose dialogue between two or more antagonists. The dialogue had long been used to convey philosophical and theological ideas, from Plato to Anselm and beyond, and the Renaissance had seen a revival of the form, though Ulrich von Hutten’s inspiration, for example, was more likely the comic dialogues of Lucian. Many Reformation dialogues were more lively and direct even than Hutten’s still rather stilted efforts, and it may be that they owed their inspiration to the theatre, most notably the Shrovetide plays ( Fastnachtspiele ). 39

Other literary genres were adopted, but these were less widely used than those already mentioned; they included plays proper, such as Niklaus Manuel’s The Devourers of the Dead , performed in Berne during Lent 1523 ; 40 poems, such as Hans Sachs’s The Wittenberg Nightingale ; 41 and the apocalyptic Weissagung (prophecy) genre, associated with both prophecies (for example, those of Joachim of Fiore and Johannes Lichtenberger) and astrological predictions. 42 Those who opposed the Reformation in print used a similar array of literary styles, but here there was a far greater concentration on the more scholarly forms such as treatises and disputations. 43

In addition to classifying pamphlets in terms of genre, it is also possible to classify them in terms of subject matter. Ozment has identified seven major areas covered by Reformation pamphlets: 44 critiques of Catholic religious belief and practices, particularly aspects of the sacrament of penance, indulgences, confraternities; critiques of and satires on the clergy and religious; 45 complaints about the social and economic implications of Catholicism; defences of clerical matrimony, and advice on marriage and domestic life; treatises on Church-State relations; books of or about peasant protest and revolt; and “mirrors of a Christian” and other catechetical literature.

Such classifications by style and subject matter are artificial and, as one might expect, a high proportion of pamphlets straddle two or more genres (a treatise in the form of a letter, for example), or deal with more than one subject. The pamphleteers were, after all, addressing a general public, not a specific audience with a single interest. Their variety of approach is nowhere more evident than in individual topics treated in the pamphlets. Köhler analyzed a random sample of more than 3,000 pamphlets from the period 1520–1530 and concluded that the average pamphlet dealt with at least nine topics (such as Scripture, the doctrine of justification, and so on), and a maximum of well over twenty. 46 The topical richness of the pamphlets leads Köhler to conclude that they were not as ephemeral as is usually supposed. Certainly, it could be argued that the more devotional and edificatory pamphlets had a longer “shelf life” than the occasional and polemical pieces.

The Visual Impact of Reformation Pamphlets

The message of the pamphlets was not conveyed by words alone. Many pamphlets and most broadsheets were enlivened by woodcut illustrations. These were sometimes no more than title-page decoration to a publisher’s standard design, complete with playful putti in irrelevant (and often irreverent) poses. But sometimes, as with the broadsheets, woodcuts could be related to the text in a more appropriate way. The precise relationship between text and image, and the effectiveness of this relationship in the context of a largely illiterate society, is still the subject of debate.

During the 15th century, woodcuts of the saints, usually associated with pilgrimage sites, circulated widely both before and after the advent of the printing press. 47 Another type of woodcut with a religious theme was that included by Sebastian Brant in his writings, explicitly intended for those who could not read the text without help. 48 Cuts with an anticlerical or antipapal message were also issued before the Reformation, most famously an early example of paper engineering in which a reverential portrait of Pope Alexander VI became, at the turn of a flap, a triple-crowned devil. Finally, woodcuts were used to illustrate apocalyptic broadsheets frequently critical of ecclesiastical institutions.

On the eve of the Reformation, therefore, there existed a repertoire of printed images with a wide range of religious associations, from the devotional and edifying to the critical, which could be drawn on by Protestant illustrators both to condemn the Church of their day and to present an alternative ideology in positive terms. But how successful were they in this dual aim? It is reasonable to suppose that negative images that ridiculed or vilified the authorities would, like present-day political cartoons, have a far greater effect than more constructive images. This was certainly the view of Scribner, who believed that compared with the “undeniable success” of the anti-papal features of Reformation visual polemic, attempts to produce more positive propaganda came to little. 49 One of the most celebrated examples of the use of negative imagery is the joint publication by Luther and Melanchthon, The Significance of Two Horrible Figures ( 1523 ). This depicts and describes a misshapen calf born in 1522 , known as the Monk-Calf of Freiburg, and a strange creature found dead on the banks of the Tiber in 1496 , known as the Pope-Ass. The first was interpreted by Luther as a sign of God’s displeasure at monasticism, the second by Melanchthon as a judgement on the Papacy. The explanation of portents was a stock-in-trade of the late medieval broadsheets, and the Wittenberg reformers were able to harness anti-Roman feeling, a universal interest in strange phenomena, and fascination with the grotesque to good effect: the pamphlet went through several editions. 50

Perhaps even more negative was the frequent depiction of Luther’s opponents as animals, making them figures of fun and defusing the force of their arguments or the threat they posed. Johann Cochlaeus and Pope Leo X had names that invited their immediate transformation into a snail and a lion respectively. Hieronymus Emser’s family arms featured a wild mountain goat, and he likened himself to this noble beast before he was metamorphosed into it by his enemies; Thomas Murner’s surname suggested (at a pinch) the “murmaw” call of a tom-cat; and Jacobus Hochstraten’s name lent itself to transformation into “höchste Ratte,” “King Rat.” The reasons for identifying Johann Eck as a sow and Jakob Lemp as a dog are now lost to us. 51

Negative images were undoubtedly striking and had an important place in the arsenal of Reformation publicists. But they were neither the most characteristic, nor the most effective, nor the most enduring use to which the xylographer’s art was put in the service of reform. Köhler examined the title page illustrations of 519 pamphlets published between 1501 and 1530 and discovered that, in over 40 percent of cases, the illustration helped to explain the content of the pamphlet, while only 16 percent could be described as polemical in intent. 52 These figures might even underestimate the constructive nature of Reformation iconography, since Köhler looked only at title pages, not illustrations in the body of the text, and did not consider broadsheets. But even his raw data are a useful corrective to the common assumption that such illustrations were predominantly negative. It should also be noted that many apparently negative illustrations in reality had a dual nature, conveying a positive message alongside the negative. Several of the most famous Reformation woodcuts possess this quality, especially those that were deliberately constructed as a diptych, or that otherwise expressed a contrast between truth and falsehood. Examples of this genre include the late ( c . 1547 ) Two Kinds of Preaching by Lucas Cranach the Younger, as well as the much earlier The Old and New God , and of course the Passional of Christ and the Antichrist ( 1521 ). 53 In the last of these, by depicting a contrast between the Christ forced to carry his cross and the Pope carried in a litter, Cranach the Elder not only criticizes curial ostentation, but also makes the theological point that the true following of Christ involves suffering. It is therefore difficult to make a hard and fast distinction between positive and negative illustrations in these pamphlets, and still more difficult to conclude with Scribner that the negative had a greater popular appeal.

A similar degree of agnosticism seems called for when considering the public at which these illustrations were aimed. The traditional understanding of images as the books of the unlearned certainly underlies much Reformation publishing, in which illustrations are explicitly described as being for the sake of the simpler sort. But it has been pointed out that such illustrations often make little or no sense without some knowledge of the accompanying text. 54 Moreover, the interpretation of many images presupposes a good knowledge of Scripture or the classics. 55 For example, the woodcut of The Poor Common Ass ( 1525 ) is notoriously difficult to decipher, even with the aid of Hans Sachs’s accompanying text. 56 But it makes much more sense if the ass, which here represents the poor common people, is seen as the heroic beast of Numbers 22. Her riders (devilish personifications of Tyranny, Usury, and Hypocrisy) can then be interpreted as successive Balaams opposed to God’s will, while the ass herself balks at the angel with a drawn sword, on the extreme right of the cut, who represents the Word of God. Two other angels, representing Reason and Justice, are portrayed as ineffective in comparison. 57 The interpretation of Hans Holbein the Younger’s woodcut, Christ the Light of the World benefits from familiarity not only with the Johannine antithesis of light and darkness, but also with the allegory of the cave in Plato’s Republic . 58 In neither example would ignorance of the biblical or classical allusions hinder comprehension of the fundamental message of the woodcuts, but knowledge of them adds to their layers of meaning and to their enjoyment. Like the double-entendres of British pantomime, which can win both innocent laughter from those of tender years and salacious guffaws from adults, such images were clearly designed to work at different levels simultaneously. We are again reminded of how “literary” Reformation iconography could be, and of the closeness with which the different media of communication were integrated.

To speak of “Reformation” iconography is, however, misleading. The generous use of illustrations in printed religious matter was characteristic of the Lutheran Reformation but not of Calvinism, which in the 16th century demonstrated what has been called a fear of graphic representation. 59 We are reminded that the Reformed (Zwinglians and Calvinists) were far more exercised about the place of images in worship than were Evangelicals, and perhaps it is concern at the possible misuse of pamphlet illustrations that explains this fear. 60 That these fears were not entirely unfounded is suggested by the fate of Luther’s own image. Scribner has shown how pictures of the reformer, often in saintly guise complete with halo or other sign of divine favor, came to be treated with as much devotion and superstition as any religious image of the Middle Ages. 61

The peculiarly Lutheran predilection for images had another result, in the illustration of Lutheran bibles. In a brilliant study of the German New Testament ( 1522 ), Edwards has shown the licence with which Luther treated the physical text of Scripture, hedging it about with introductions and marginalia in an attempt to show the reader “what he should expect in this book.” 62 These aids included Cranach’s polemical woodcuts for the Revelation of St. John, most famously the depictions of the beast in the temple (Rev. 11) and of the whore of Babylon (Rev. 17) wearing papal tiaras. The tiaras proved controversial and were quickly withdrawn; but their original inclusion exemplifies the remarkable freedom Luther felt able to exercise in relation to the form of the sacred text, provided that its essence was retained. A further development of this freedom came with the production of Lutheran “lay Bibles.” Here the image was all-important, and such Bibles were often no more than collections of broadsheets, illustrating with text and woodcut the main outline of salvation history. This was not so much a case of a Bible specifically prepared for the laity, as if layfolk were second-class Christians who did not need exposure to the real thing, but a means of preparing the laity to access the Bible. 63

Pamphleteers and Printers

A large proportion—perhaps around half—of Reformation pamphlets omit any indication of author or printer or provenance or date, partly to avoid the risk of prosecution, partly perhaps to indicate a mighty but anonymous swell of popular support for reform. 64 In some cases, internal or external evidence allows us to identify the author; in other cases, telltale characteristics such as standard title page designs or typefaces or house styles can reveal the identity of the printer and/or the year of publication. But often these anonymous pamphlets keep their secrets. Nonetheless, a great number of pamphlets do carry reliable information, and allow us to make fairly firm generalizations.

It is a relatively straightforward task to name the most widely published of the evangelical pamphleteers. Luther himself comfortably heads the list of vernacular writers active between 1518 and 1525 , with 1,465 German-language printings and reprintings of his works, trailed at some distance by Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt (125), Urbanus Rhegius (77), Philipp Melanchthon (71), Ulrich Zwingli (70), Johann Eberlin von Günzburg (62), Wenceslaus Linck (53), Hans Sachs (51), Heinrich von Kettenbach (45), Johannes Bugenhagen (41), Johann Oecolampadius (42), Jakob Strauss (42), Ulrich von Hutten (41), Hartmuth von Cronberg (32), Thomas Müntzer (18), Wolfgang Capito (14), Balthasar Hubmaier (12), and Martin Bucer (7). 65 As one might imagine, this list of the most prolific evangelicals is dominated by clergy and the theologically educated: six of the eighteen had been monks or friars and eight were secular clergy. Perhaps more surprising is that the names of four laymen appear on the list: Melanchthon, Sachs, Hutten, and Cronberg.

Interestingly, this list would seem to be fairly representative of pamphleteers as a whole. No detailed prosopographical studies of evangelical writers as such exist, but analogous data is available from Scribner’s study of Protestant preachers active in Germany to 1550 (several of whom were also pamphleteers). 66 This shows that 20 percent of preachers were lay, mostly teachers, which corresponds closely to the 22 percent of our list. Thirty-two percent had backgrounds in religion, while 42 percent were secular clergy. 67 This is very close to the population of Edwards’s list, which yields 33 percent former religious and 44 percent secular clergy. Scribner’s preachers were mostly young to middle-aged when they started their evangelical preaching careers: 31 percent of those for whom we have data were under 30; a further 37 percent were aged between 31 and 40. 68 They were a well-educated group, of whom three quarters were university educated, and no fewer than half had completed or commenced a higher degree. 69 And while they were overwhelmingly urban in background, they were not necessarily privileged: 49 percent came from artisan, poor urban, or poor rural families. 70

The category of lay writers can be broken down still further. Miriam Chrisman has studied the writings of all ninety-four German lay propaganda pamphleteers (Protestant and Catholic) active in the period 1519 to 1530 , and has determined their social status as follows: noble knights, 25 percent; minor civil servants and technicians, 18 percent; urban elite, 6.5 percent; town clerks and university-educated officials, 10.5 percent; artisans, middle-ranking burghers, popular poets, 40.5 percent. 71 Given the numerical predominance of the artisan class, it is not surprising that one of the four most prolific lay writers (Hans Sachs) should belong to that group. Hutten and Cronberg came from the second most populated group, the nobility. The fourth, Melanchthon, was omitted from Chrisman’s reckoning. Chrisman further identifies six (6.5%) of her ninety-four writers as women (one from the rank of the nobility, two from the civil servant/technician class, and three from the urban elite). Three of the lay pamphleteers are identified as Catholic. A lay category omitted by Chrisman was that of peasant writers. Some thirty pamphlets were published under the names of self-styled peasants in this period, but Chrisman assumes that these were in reality the work of educated clerical reformers masquerading as peasants. 72

The same tendency to social and cultural mobility is evident in the case of the printers who produced pamphlets. Printers were typically drawn from the ranks of highly skilled manual workers—silversmiths, goldsmiths, engravers, and painters—who could use many of their skills in the art and technology of printing. Others came up from the ranks, as it were, journeymen who composed the type or pulled the sheets and who had amassed enough capital to set up in business for themselves. Yet others were highly educated men: at least twelve of the seventy-seven printers active in Strasbourg between 1480 and 1599 had been to university, while Georg Rhau became a printer in Wittenberg only after having held the chair of music at the university. 73 Printing involved art, technology, labor, commerce, and intellectual activity, and it is not surprising that printers themselves were drawn from all these worlds, and often continued to inhabit them. On the one hand was Heinrich Seybold of Strasbourg, whose printing business was ancillary to his main profession as a physician. 74 On the other hand, in the smaller shops it was not unknown for the master himself, along with his wife and children, to roll up their sleeves and share in the presswork. 75 Examples of women printers are rare but not unknown. As with all the regulated trades, it was common for businesses to pass to others through marriage or re-marriage as well as through direct (male) inheritance; but it was unusual for women to run presses themselves for any length of time, or to carry out business in their own name. Margarethe Prüss of Strasbourg, whose three husbands were all printers, ran her dead father’s shop for two brief periods of widowhood ( 1522–1525 and 1526–1527 ). Another Strasbourg woman, the unmarried Walpurg Wühinger, purchased citizenship in 1525 and joined the printers’ trade guild, but seems to have printed nothing. 76

The printers can justifiably be called unsung heroes of the Reformation, because of the dangers they ran in handling religious pamphlets. In addition to the usual commercial risks, publishers of such material in the Empire, between 1521 and 1528 , were acting in contravention of the Edict of Worms. In practice, the Edict was enforced along partisan lines, to enable an evangelical city council to act against a Catholic printer (such as Johann Grüninger in Strasbourg), or a Catholic council against evangelical printers (such as Leipzig and Dresden under Duke Georg). Partly for this reason, and partly to make a profit, some printers handled the pamphlets of both sides indiscriminately (examples include Johann Weissenberger at Landshut, Valentin Schumann at Leipzig, and Ulrich Morhart at Tübingen). But others clearly worked in accordance with their own religious convictions, such as the Catholics Peter Quentel at Cologne, Alexander Weissenhorn at Ingolstadt, who printed for Eck, and Nicholas Wolrab at Leipzig, who printed for Cochlaeus. The greatest risks were run by those who printed Anabaptist works, who could not rely on a friendly council but could depend on the hostility of Protestants and Catholics alike. One such was the Nuremberg printer Hans Hergot, who was executed in 1527 for printing the pamphlet The New Transformation of a Christian Life , which describes a communalist utopia. 77 In a display of ecumenical intolerance typical of the age, Hergot was prosecuted by Luther for publishing falsified copies of his New Testament, and by Duke Georg of Saxony on the other side of the religious divide. It was at the latter’s instigation that Hergot was killed.

The tragic example of Hergot and his vision of a society free from the tyranny of property reminds us how socially conservative the 16th century was. But in spite of its conservatism and deep concern with matters of status and rank (not even Hergot proposed the outright abolition of the nobility), it was also a period of great social mobility and the breaking down of time-honored distinctions. The rise of the commercial classes meant that the landed gentry no longer had a monopoly of wealth, while the expansion of university education challenged the Church’s claim to monopolize learning: the difference between cleric and layperson was no longer that between the lettered and the unlettered. The role of the clergy was partly confirmed, partly further undermined, by such lay movements as the devotio moderna and the popularity of lay-controlled confraternities. The Reformation, when it came, was led by clergy and monks, who preached the open Bible and the priesthood of all believers, and in doing so undermined their own position in society. We can see from the background and education of both pamphleteers and printers that they, no less than the pamphlets they produced, inhabited the social and cultural meeting-point of worlds hitherto kept apart.

Pamphlets were ephemeral productions designed to be read as soon as they came off the press. The efforts described above of pamphleteers and printers to design, produce, and market these little books would have been wasted without the prospect of an immediate, paying readership. Unfortunately, this is the aspect of the process we can say least about with any degree of certainty. One can of course deduce from the characteristics of a pamphlet the “public” at which it was aimed; but that is no firm indication of the audience actually reached. 78 Equally, one can deduce from the fact that pamphlets have survived to this day in libraries and private collections that these books were bought and owned and preserved; but book owning is not the same as book reading. Much invaluable work has been done on the inventories of books sometimes attached to 16th-century wills. 79 But pamphlets were often not considered worth recording separately, alongside more valuable bound volumes, and inventory evidence is therefore sketchy at best. It seems that our understanding of pamphlet-consumption is destined to lag behind our understanding of pamphlet production.

Review of the Literature

Despite over a century and a half of intensive research, the phenomenon of printing, propaganda, and public opinion in the time of Martin Luther remains enigmatic. The amount of printed material that has survived is considerable, and through such developments as the Universal Short-Title Catalogue and the progressive digitization of library holdings, it is now more accessible than ever before. Academics who conducted their doctoral research before the late 1990s can only envy the facilities available to their present-day successors. However, there is much we still do not know about this mass of material. We do not know how representative were the views they contain, or how effective these publications were at persuading others of those views. Precisely because it has been, and remains, so enigmatic, the field of Reformation printing has been perhaps more than usually vulnerable to the vagaries of scholarly fashion. Before suggesting how this field is likely to develop in future, it might be instructive briefly to review the manner in which it has been treated in the past.

Past Approaches to Pamphlet Literature

A pamphlet in 16th-century Germany was known in Latin as a libellus (from which the English word “libel” derives) and in German as a buchlein or, often, a schandbuchlein . The term “flying writing” ( Flugschrift in German, feuille volante in French) was first coined by C. F. D. Schubart in 1787–1788 . 80 Unlike the neutral English word “pamphlet,” both sets of terms were pejorative, one emphasizing their role in slandering their opponents, the other emphasizing their transitory nature. The terms reinforced the idea that Reformation pamphlets were cheap, crude, and aesthetically unprepossessing artefacts of far less interest to the bibliographer than literary works of more lasting value, and it is fair to say that, because of this, pamphlets received little scholarly attention until the second half of the 19th century. 81

The case for studying pamphlets as a worthwhile subject of historical and theological inquiry in their own right was first put seriously by Gottfried Blochwitz in a 1930 article. 82 Blochwitz set the agenda for much subsequent discussion by categorizing authors according to the fidelity with which they reproduced Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone. He concluded that these pamphlets were evidence that Luther had disseminated his message successfully to every level of society, even the lowest. Blochwitz’s research questions and conclusions reflected the interests of his day. During the 1930s and 1940s, Nazi ideology would deify “the common [German] man,” his wisdom and traditions, as was reflected in a general scholarly interest at the time in volkisch lore and movements. 83 Under the Third Reich, Luther’s mastery of the print propaganda of his time was seen explicitly as a forerunner of Hitler’s mastery of the wireless and the newsreel, as can be seen from a wartime doctoral dissertation in which Luther was presented quite explicitly as a literary Volksführer. 84 Reformation pamphlets became object lessons in the successful propagandizing of a populace, and were hailed, quite literally, as weapons in a propaganda war: two selections of pamphlets appeared in the early 1930s with uncompromisingly militaristic titles: Stormtroopers of the Reformation and Satirical Field Artillery against the Reformation . 85

The theme of “Luther and public opinion” was specifically addressed in a book of the same name by the French Germanist Maurice Gravier, who studied a select number of Reformation pamphlets from a series of perspectives: their position for or against Luther, their value for shedding light on social and economic history, and their literary merit. 86 It was perhaps over-ambitious in its scope, and it makes the mistake of assuming that the message of the pamphlets reflected public opinion. But given the personal and practical difficulties Gravier must have faced in writing about a German national hero in German-occupied France, his work deserves to be considered a landmark study.

More Recent Research

Perhaps because of the enthusiasm with which pamphlet studies were prosecuted in the Nazi era, the immediate post-war years saw a decline of interest. One of the most important works to emerge in the 1950s was Ingeborg Kolodziej’s dissertation, completed in Berlin at the height of the Cold War; although pioneering in several respects, and still widely cited to this day, it is indicative of the contemporary state of pamphlet research that it was never published. 87 Not until the mid-1970s was the interest of scholars fully revived, and this was due to three factors above all.

The Impact of Information Technology

The development of ready-made statistical programs for mainframe computers in the 1960s and 1970s enabled historians who were not programming specialists to access computers for the manipulation of large bodies of data. The analysis of catalogue entries of 16th-century book collections, broken down by author, date, provenance, publisher, language, format, and so on, was pioneered by R. G. Cole in his study of the Gustav Freytag pamphlet collection. 88 This was followed by similar computer analyses by Chrisman and Edwards, though their studies were not restricted to pamphlets. 89 A statistical approach to early printed pamphlets and books was also taken by R. A. Crofts. 90 The advent of the worldwide web transformed this field of study in two ways. First, it meant that large bibliographies could be hosted online and laid the foundation for the holy grail of researchers, a union catalogue of all 16th-century holdings extant in libraries. The Universal Short-Title Catalogue is hosted at St. Andrews and has been supported chiefly by the United Kingdom’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly for the purposes of this entry, digital copies of holdings of regional German libraries are being made accessible online free of charge. This service lacks the sophistication of an equivalent paid-for service such as Early English Books Online (which alongside digital images provides the machine-readable text of the books), but is nonetheless likely to revolutionize the study of German Reformation pamphlets once again.

The “History of the Book” Approach

The second of the three factors behind the renaissance of pamphlet research is the adoption of the so-called “history of the book” approach. Pioneered by French scholars such as Lucien Febvre, it attempts to locate printing in its social and cultural context and is therefore an arm of cultural history. 91 The most ambitious attempt to apply this approach to 16th-century book production was E. L. Eisenstein’s The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Chrisman’s essay on the Strasbourg book trade applies the same method to a detailed local study, while Natalie Zemon Davis’s classic studies of book production in Lyon also fall under this heading. Since then, the “history of the book” has continued to develop as one of the most vibrant areas of study in early-modern history. Something of its vitality can be gauged from the Library of the Written Word series, published by Brill under the direction of Andrew Pettegree.

The Reformation “Public Sphere”

The third factor, which has particularly characterized German-language studies, is the post-war growth of methods for assessing the effectiveness of mass communications. The result has been an unlikely alliance of capitalist and Marxist methodologies brought to bear on the Reformation pamphlet. The way was led in the 1970s by Balzer’s analysis of Hans Sachs’s pamphlets according to the principles of mass communication research and market research, and by Schütte’s study of Murner’s Great Lutheran Fool using propaganda theory. 92 Behind both works lay the application to the early 16th century of Jurgen Habermas’s concept of bürgerliche Öffentlichkeit , a multivalent term usually translated into English as “the bourgeois public sphere.” While Habermas himself insisted that the condition for the development of the public sphere proper did not exist before the 18th century, the case has been put for the emergence of a reformatorische Öffentlichkeit (a “Reformation public sphere”) in the 1520s. 93 These limited studies were followed by the work of H.-J. Köhler and his pamphlet research unit based at Tübingen, who subjected much larger samples of pamphlets to an array of approaches, including communication theory and propaganda analysis and opinion research. 94 Bernd Moeller’s Flugschriften project at Göttingen also produced a series of valuable studies based on more traditional content analysis. 95

The public sphere approach has had the effect of demonstrating the importance of context when discussing German Reformation propaganda. First, it is now usual to speak of a communication process in which the public were not mere recipients of a propaganda message but active participants within the Reformation public sphere. It is also acknowledged that, for various reasons, the Reformation public sphere that obtained in Germany was not replicated elsewhere, and therefore that the German experience cannot be taken as indicative of the European experience as a whole. 96 Finally, the Reformation public sphere needs to be seen as one stage, and an early one at that, of a communications revolution that would last centuries and would come to include such developments as those of a postal service and the newspaper. 97 The fact that recent generations have lived through three communications revolutions in quick succession (the personal computer in the 1980s, the Internet in the 1990s, and mobile computing in the 2000s) sensitizes us to the experience of analogous change undergone by previous generations and, combined with the greater access to research materials made possible by those very advances, encourages one to believe that the study of printing, propaganda, and public opinion in the age of Luther will continue to flourish.

Primary Sources

Opportunities for getting to grips with German Reformation pamphlets are understandably limited for those who lack a reading knowledge of 16th-century German and (in some cases) Latin. An excellent starting place would be Luther’s own pamphlets, which range from the short and pithy ( The Sermon on Indulgence and Grace of 1518) to the long and pithy ( To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation of 1520), and which can readily be found in the standard Luther translations. For instance, both the above-mentioned can be found in Timothy Wengert’s The Annotated Luther. For translations of typical pamphlets by publicists other than Luther, including an example of contemporary Catholic counter-propaganda, see Erika Rummel’s Scheming Papists and Lutheran Fools. Five Reformation Satires . See also B. D. Mangrum and G. Scarizzi, A Reformation Debate: Karlstadt, Emser, and Eck on Sacred Images. It is unfortunate that more anthologies of Reformation pamphlets do not exist in English translation, though there are examples of German equivalents, which are less forbidding to the learner than a digitized or even a real pamphlet. Thanks to its being reprinted in 1967, there are still copies of Otto Clemen’s valuable edition of Flugschriften aus den ersten Jahren der Reformation in university libraries. More recent anthologies include a series that originated in the German Democratic Republic and reflects Marxist principles of selection: Adolf Laube and Hans‑Werner Seiffert, Flugschriften der Bauernkriegszeit ; Adolf Laube Flugschriften der frühen Reformationsbewegung (1518–1524, Flugschriften vom Bauernkrieg zum Täufferreich (152–1535) , and Flugschriften gegen die Reformation (1525–1530. Many examples of printed broadsheets can be found in Max Geisberg and W.L Strauss, The German Single-Leaf Woodcut: 1500–1550. 98

For the more advanced student, the digitized holdings of German regional libraries are proving to be a wonderful, free, resource. The process is not yet complete, but it has already transformed the field, especially for scholars based outside Germany. Notable collections include those of Bavaria , Erfurt-Gotha , and Saxony-Anhalt . The best finding aid for German pamphlets since 2000 has been the Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachbereich erschienenen Drucke des 16 , abbreviated as VD16 . 99 A version of this is now online, hosted by the Bavarian State Library . As of April 2012, about 30 percent of the entries in VD16 had been digitized. For pamphlets printed outside Germany, the best starting-point is the USTC (Universal Short Title Catalogue).

Further Reading

• Behringer, Wolfgang . “Communications Revolutions: A Historiographical Concept.” German History 24.3 (2006): 333–374.
• Chrisman, Miriam U. Conflicting Visions of Reform: German Lay Propaganda Pamphlets, 1519–1530 . Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996.
• Dickens, Arthur Geoffrey . The German Nation and Martin Luther . London: Harper & Row, 1974.
• Edwards, Mark U., Jr. Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther . Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994.
• Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe . Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
• Gilmont, Jean François , ed. The Reformation and the Book . Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 1998.
• Matheson, Peter . The Rhetoric of the Reformation . London: T&T Clark, 1998.
• Moeller, Bernd . “Flugschriften der Reformationszeit,” Theologische Realenzyklopädie , Vol. 11, ed. Siegfried M. Schwertner . Berlin: de Gruyter, 1983.
• Ozment, Steven . The Serpent and the Lamb: Cranach, Luther, and the Making of the Reformation . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011.
• Pettegree, Andrew , and Matthew Hall . “The Reformation and the Book: A Reconsideration.” Historical Journal 47 (2004): 1–24.
• Pettegree, Andrew . Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion . Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• Scribner, Robert W. For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation . 2d ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.

1. Mark U. Edwards Jr. , Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994) ; see Table 1 on 18f.

2. Hans-Joachim Köhler , “Erste Schritte zu einem Meinungsprofil der frühen Reformationszeit,” in Martin Luther: Probleme seiner Zeit , Volker Press and Dieter Stievermann (eds), Spätmittelalter und Frühe Neuzeit (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1986), 250 . Miriam U. Chrisman , Lay Culture, Learned Culture: Books and Social Change in Strasbourg (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982) .

3. WA TR 1:523, no. 1038.

4. Cited in Elizabeth L. Eisenstein , The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 305 .

5. Lawrence Stone , “Literacy and Education in England, 1640-1900,” Past and Present 42 (1969): 69–139 .

6. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, passim .

7. Berndt Hamm , “Die Reformation als Medienereignis,” Jahrbuch für biblische Theologie 11 (1996): 137–166.

8. Bernd Moeller , “Stadt und Buch: Bemerkungen zur Struktur der reformatorischen Bewegung in Deutschland,” in Stadtbürgertum und Adel in der Reformatio: Studien zur Sozialgeschichte der Reformation in England und Deutschland , ed. W. J. Mommsen (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1979), 25–39 , at 30.

9. Arthur Geoffrey Dickens , The German Nation and Martin Luther (London: Harper & Row, 1974), 103.

10. Robert Scribner , “Oral Culture and the Diffusion of Reformation Ideas,” History of European Ideas 5 (1984): 238.

11. Luther, foreword to Fastenpostille (WA 17/II: 2–3).

12. WA 4:476–478, no. 4763. Other anti-book-proliferation sentiments can be found at 6:458 (the doleful influence of Aristotle’s books); WA 15:50 (against monastic books); WA 53:217f. (that not all books are good); WA TR 4:75, no. 4012 (that the books of some Latin poets should be banned); WA TR 4:84f., no. 4025 (that there are too many books and only the Bible should be read); WA TR 4:432f., no. 4691 (against “the infinite sea of books”); WA TR 5:662–665, no. 6442 (the existence of the Bible in German makes other publications unnecessary).

13. John L. Flood , “Le livre dans le monde germanique à l’époque de la Réforme,” in Jean-François Gilmont , ed., La Réforme et le livre. L’Europe de l’imprimé (1517–v.1570) (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1990), 61f .

14. An influential example is Gottfried Blochwitz , “Die antirömischen deutschen Flugschriften der frühen Reformationszeit (bis 1522) in ihrer religiös-sittlichen Eigenart,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 27 (1930): 145–254.

15. See, for example, Hans-Joachim Köhler , “‘Der Bauer wird witzig’: Der Bauer in den Flugschriften der Reformationszeit,” in Zugänge zur Bauerlichen Reformation, ed. Peter Blickle (Zurich: Chronos, 1987), 196–198 ; Miriam Usher Chrisman , Conflicting Visions of Reform. German Lay Propaganda Pamphlets, 1519–1530 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996), 7 ; Peter Matheson , The Rhetoric of the Reformation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 84 .

16. Scribner, “Oral culture,” 238, 251. Contrast the approach taken by Steven Ozment in Protestants: The Birth of a Revolution (New York: Doubleday, 1992).

17. Steven E. Ozment , ed., Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research (St. Louis, MO: Center for Reformation Research, 1982) ; W. S. Maltby , ed., Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research II (St. Louis, MO: Center for Reformation Research, 1992) ; David Whitford , ed., Reformation and Early Modern Europe: A Guide to Research (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2008) .

18. Flood, “Le livre dans le monde germanique,” 100.

19. Johann Cochlaeus , Auff Luthers Trostbrieff an ettliche zu Leiptzigk, Antwort und grundtliche unterricht, was mit denselbigen gehandelt (Dresden: Wolfgang Stöckel, 1533) , sig. aiir-v. Cochlaeus makes this point in an interesting foreword, in which he compares the huge sums wasted each year on heretical books in Germany with the fabulous wealth accruing to those more loyal Catholic realms, Spain and Portugal, from their newfound lands.

20. Martin Arnold , Handwerker als theologische Schriftstelle: Studien zu Flugschriften der frühen Reformation (1523–1525) (Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990), 330 . Peter Matheson , Argula von Grumbach: A Woman’s Voice in the Reformation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), 136 et passim .

21. Heinrich von Kettenbach , Ein Sermon zu der löblichen Statt Ulm zu seynem Valete in Flugschriften aus den ersten Jahren der Reformation , 4 vols., ed. Otto Clemen (1907–1911; repr. 1967), 2: 107 . Other evidence of pamphlets being read aloud is collated by Scribner, “Oral culture,” 241–243. Andrew Pettegree questions whether this would have been a widespread practice, given the strict social distance between the literate and the illiterate. See his Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 117–120.

22. Monika Rössing-Hager , “Wie stark findet der nichtlesekundige Rezipient Berücksichtigung in der Flugschriften?” in Flugschriften als Massenmedium der Reformation , ed. H.-J. Köhler , Spätmittelalter und Frühe Neuzeit 13 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981), 77–137 . See also R.W. Scribner , “Oral culture and the transmission of Reformation ideas” in Helga Robinson-Hammerstein , ed., The Transmission of Ideas in the Lutheran Reformation (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1989), 83–104 .

23. Scribner , For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation , second edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), xv . The concept of hybridization is borrowed from McLuhan.

24. Flood, “Le livre dans le monde germanique,” 90.

25. Edwards, Printing, Propaganda , 39 and 172.

26. Flood, “Le livre dans le monde germanique,” 94, 95.

27. Pettegree, Culture of Persuasion , 169ff. See also his comments on reasons for purchasing books “which have little or nothing to do with reading” on 156–159.

28. R. W. Scribner , “Practice and Principle in the German towns: Preachers and People,” in Reformation Principle and Practice: Essays Presented to Arthur Geoffrey Dickens, ed., Peter Newman Brooks (London: Scolar Press, 1980), 97–117 , see at Table 4. Scribner gives the example of Bartholomeus Rieseberg, an agricultural labourer until the age of 17, when he sought an education. Attaching himself to a succession of tutors and schools, he eventually enrolled at the university of Wittenberg in 1518. He became a convinced Lutheran and eventually returned to his own village as its pastor (p. 106).

29. Kai-Wing Chow , “Reinventing Gutenberg: Woodblock and Movable-Type Printing in Europe and China,” in Agent of Change: Print Culture Studies after Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, eds., Sabrina Alcorn Brown , Eric N. Lindquist , and Eleanor F. Shevlin (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), 169–192.

30. Elizabeth L. Eisenstein , The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 30 ; Lucien Febvre and H.-J. Martin , L’apparition du livre (Paris: Albin Michel, 1974), 56 .

31. See Robinson-Hammerstein, The Transmission of Ideas, 18, and the literature cited there.

32. Bernd Moeller , “Flugschriften der Reformationszeit,” Theologische Realenzyklopädie, Vol. 11 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1983) 240 . See the Universal Short-Title Catalogue (USTC) for details of formats.

33. Moeller, Theologische Realenzyklopädie, Vol. 11, 240; Herbert Walz , Deutsche Literatur der Reformationszeit: Eine Einführung (Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1988), 66 . On the Jetzer case, Luther’s later literary opponent Thomas Murner, OFM, published the tract Die war History von der vier Ketzer Prediger Ordens zu Bern verbrant (Strasbourg, Germany: Johann Knobloch, 1510); Johannes Pfefferkorn, the former Jew who opposed Reuchlin over the banning of the Talmud, advised the expulsion or enslavement of all Jews in the Holy Roman Empire in his pamphlet Ich bin ain büchlinn der Juden veindt ist mein namen (Augsburg, 1509).

34. H.-J. Köhler , “Die Flugschriften. Versuch der Präzisierung eines geläufigen Begriffs,” in Festgabe für Ernst Walter Zeeden zum 60: Geburtstag, eds. H. Rabe and Hansgeorg Molitor (Münster: Aschendorff, 1976), 36–61 , at 50. Köhler’s definition is helpfully expanded by Johannes Schwitalla in his Deutsche Flugschriften, 1460–1525. Textsortengeschichtliche Studien (Tübingen, Germany: Niemeyer Max Verlag, 1983), 14.

35. See Tables 2 and 3 in Richard G. Cole, “The Reformation pamphlet and communication processes” in Köhler, Flugschriften als Massenmedium , 139–161.

36. Useful introductions to the message of the Reformation pamphlet in English can be found in Ozment, Protestants , 45–86 and in two books by Peter Matheson : The Rhetoric of the Reformation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998) and The Imaginative World of the Reformation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001).

37. The German word Sermon is a linguistic “false friend” for modern English-speakers, usually representing the Latin sermo (“reasoned discourse”). For example, Luther’s Eyn Sermon von dem Newen Testament of 1519 was in fact a treatise. A sermon proper was normally entitled “ein Predigt.”

38. See Ralph Keen’s analysis of Bugenhagen’s Epistola ad Anglos (1525) in his Johannes Cochlaeus: Responsio ad Bugenhagium Pomeranum (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1988), 17–22.

39. For examples translated into English, see Erika Rummel , Scheming Papists and Lutheran Fools. Five Reformation Satires (New York: Fordham University Press, 1993) , which contains selections from Hutten and others. See also W. Lenk , Die Reformation im zeitgenössischen Dialog (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1968) and Bernd Balzer , Bürgerliche Reformationspropaganda: Die Flugschriften des Hans Sachs in den Jahren, 1523–25 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1973), 99–104 .

40. Text in F. Vetter , ed., Niklaus Manuels Spiel evangelischer Freiheit: Die Totenfresser. “Vom Papst und seiner Priesterschaft” 1523 (Leipzig: H. Haessel, 1923).

41. “Die wittembergisch Nachtigall, die man ietz horet uberall,” in Ausgewählte Werke, Vol. 1, Hans Sachs (Leipzig: Insel, 1923), 8–24.

42. See D. Kurze , Johannes Lichtenberger: Eine Studie zur Geschichte der Prophetie und Astrologie , Historische Studien 379 (Lübeck, Germany: Matthiesen, 1960) ; also M. Steinmetz, “Johann Virdung von Hassfurt, sein Leben und seine astrologischen Flugschriften,” in Köhler, Flugschriften als Massenmedium , 353–372; and Paolo Zambelli , ed., “Astrologi hallucinati” : Stars and the End of the World in Luther’s Time (Berlin: de Gruyer, 1986).

43. See David V. N. Bagchi , Luther’s Earliest Opponents. Catholic Controversialists, 1518–1525 , second ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), 195.

44. See Steven E. Ozment , “Pamphlet literature of the German Reformation,” in Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research (St Louis, 1982), 85–105 , esp. 90–105.

45. The anticlericalism presented in around 400 pamphlets was analyzed by Hans-Christoph Rublack in his essay “Anticlericalism in German Reformation Pamphlets,” in Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds., P. A. Dykema and H. A, Oberman (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1993), 462–489 . In the same volume, Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia (“Anticlericalism in German Reformation Pamphlets: A Response,” 491–498) challenged Rublack’s assumption that the pamphlets constitute a coherent historical source.

46. H.-J. Köhler, “The Flugschriften and Their Importance in Religious Debate: A Quantitative Approach,” in Zambelli, Astrologi hallucinati , 161–162.

47. A. M. Hind , An Introduction to the History of Woodcut (New York: Dover, 1963), 76.

48. See R. Engelsing , Analphabetentum und Lektüre. Zur Sozialgeschichte der Lesens in Deutschland zwischen feudaler und industrieller Gesellschaft (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1973), 22–23.

49. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk , 228.

50. Deuttung der czwo grewlichen Figuren, Bapstesels czu Rom und Munchkalbs zu Freyerberg ijnn Meysszen funden (Wittenberg: J. Rhau-Grünenberg, 1523), in 11: 375–385. On the Pope-Ass, see most recently Lawrence P. Buck , The Roman Monster. An Icon of the Papal Antichrist in Reformation Polemics (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2014).

51. See Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk , ills 43, 46, and 51.

52. H.-J. Köhler, “Erste Schritte,” 262f. The categories used by Köhler are: polemical (82 examples); illustrative/explanatory (213); heraldic motifs/portraits (134); devotional images/saints/Biblical motifs (84); theological instruction (6).

53. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk , ills 165f., 48, 115–126.

54. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk , 231; Pettegree, Culture of Persuasion , 111–117.

55. R. G. Cole , “Pamphlet woodcuts in the communication process of Reformation Germany,” in Pietas et Societas. New Trends in Reformation Social History: Essays in Memory of Harold J. Grimm , eds., K. C. Sessions and P. N. Bebb , Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 4 (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1985), 103–121 . See also Konrad Hoffman , “Typologie, Exemplarik und reformatorische Bildsatire,” in Kontinuität und Umbruch: Theologie und Frömmigkeit in Flugschriften und Kleinliteratur an der Wende vom 15. zum 16. Jahrhundert , eds. J. Nolte (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1978), 203f .

56. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk , ill. 93.

57. Hoffmann, “Typologie,” 194–202. Scribner himself did not recognize the allusion to Balaam’s ass and so misinterpreted the picture as ambiguous and fatalistic ( Simple Folk , 122f.).

58. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk , ill. 33. Again, in his explanation of this cut, Scribner seems unaware of its classical dimension.

59. Jean-François Gilmont , “Pour une typologie du ‘Flugschrift’ des débuts de la Réforme,” Revue d’Histoire Ecclesiastique 78 (1983), 788–809 , at 297.

60. On the 16th-century iconoclastic controversy, see the classic study by C. M. N. Eire , War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

61. R. W. Scribner , “The Incombustible Luther: The Image of the Reformer in Early Modern Germany,” Past and Present 110 (1986), 38–68.

62. Edwards, Printing , Propaganda, 109–130.

63. Robinson-Hammerstein, Transmission , 31f; Ruth B. Bottigheimer , “Bible Reading, ‘Bibles’, and the Bible for Children in Early Modern Germany,” Past and Present 139 (1993), 66–89.

64. Walz ( Deutsche Literatur , 64f.) suggests that anonymity was a deliberate tactic to hint at greater popular support than there was. In his analysis of the Freytag Collection of pamphlets, Richard G. Cole shows that some 57 percent (930 out of 1624) polemical pamphlets were anonymous (see Cole, “Reformation Pamphlet and Communication Processes,” Table 4), while 45 percent of all pamphlets lack some note of publisher, place, or date (Cole, “Reformation in Print”). Of the much larger number of pamphlets examined in the Tübingen project, 71 percent lack indication of provenance, 47 percent lack a date (see Flood, “Le livre dans le monde germanique,” 53).

65. Figures taken from Edwards, Printing , Table 5. These indications of prolificity are not entirely trustworthy. There was no contemporary German equivalent of the English Stationers’ Company or its records, so modern bibliographies are based on existing library collections, which may well betray a collecting bias in favour of more famous authors.

66. Scribner, “Practice and Principle in the German Towns.”

67. Scribner, “Practice and Principle in the German Towns,” Table 1.

68. Ibid , Table 2.

69. Ibid , Table 3.

70. Ibid , Table 4.

71. Chrisman, Conflicting Visions of Reform. The categories and statistics presented here are abstracted from Fig. 6.

72. Chrisman, Conflicting Visions , 7. See also H.-J. Köhler , “‘Der Bauer wird witzig’: der Bauer in den Flugschriften der Reformationszeit,” in Zugänge zur Bäuerlichen Reformation, ed. Peter Blickle (Zurich: Chronos, 1987), 187–218 . Contrast David Bagchi , “Poets, Peasants, and Pamphlets: Who Wrote and Who Read Reformation Flugschriften ?” Studies in Church History 42 (2006), 189–196.

73. Chrisman, Lay Culture , Table 4; Flood. “Le livre dans le monde germanique,” 46.

74. Chrisman, Lay Culture , 10.

75. Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin , The Coming of the Book. The Impact of Printing 1450–1800 (London and New York: Verso, 1990), 131.

76. Chrisman, Lay Culture , 22, 23.

77. Chrisman, Conflicting Visions , 129f.

78. Natalie Zemon Davis’s famous stricture, cited in Jean‑François Gilmont, “L'imprimerie à l'aube du XVIe siècle,” in idem, La Réforme et le livre , 24.

79. For England, see Elisabeth S. Leedham-Green , ed., Books in Cambridge Inventories , 2 vols. (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1987–1988) ; Robert J. Fehrenbach , ed., Private Libraries in Renaissance England , 7 vols. (Binghamton, NY, and Tempe, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1992–2009) , now supplemented by PLRE.Folger . For Strasbourg, see Chrisman, Lay Culture .

80. See Walz, Deutsche Literatur , 62 and Hella Tompert , “Die Flugschrift als Medium religiöser Publizistik. Aspekte der gegenwärtigen Forschung” in Kontinuität und Umbruch. Theologie und Frömmigkeit in Flugschriften und Kleinliteratur an der Wende vom 15. zum 16. Jahrhundert , eds., Josef Nolte , Hella Tompert , and Christof Windhorst (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1978), 216.

81. An important turning point in the development of pamphlet studies was the publication of Oskar Schade’s three-volume edited selection, Satiren und Pasquille aus der Reformationszeit , 3 vols. (Hanover: C. Rümpler, 1856–1858).

82. Gottfried Blochwitz , “Die antirömischen deutschen Flugschriften der frühen Reformationszeit (bis 1522) in ihrer religiös-sittlichen Eigenart,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 27 (1930), 145–254.

83. For a summary of this trend, with suggestions for further reading, see R. W. Scribner , “Ritual and Popular Religion in Catholic Germany at the Time of the Reformation,” in Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany , ed. R. W. Scribner (London: Hambledon, 1987), 17. On Blochwitz in context, see P. Bockmann , “Der gemeine Mann in den Flugschriften der Reformationszeit,” in Formensprache Studien zur Literaturästhetik und Dichtungsinterpretation , ed. P. Bockmann (Hamburg, 1966), 11–44.

84. Alexander Centgraf , “Martin Luther als Publizist: Geist und Form seiner Volksführung” (Berlin, 1940) , cited in Tompert, “Aspekte,” 218.

85. Arnold E. Berger (ed.), Die Sturmtruppen der Reformation: Ausgewählte Flugschriften der Jahre, 1520–25 (Leipzig, 1931) and idem, Satirische Feldzüge wider der Reformation: Thomas Murner, Daniel von Soest (Leipzig: Diesterweg, 1933).

86. Maurice Gravier , Luther et l’opinion publique: Essai sur la littérature satirique et polémique en langue allemande pendant les années décisives de la Réforme (1520–1530) (Paris: Editions Montaigne, 1942).

87. Ingeborg Kolodziej , “Die Flugschriften aus den ersten Jahren der Reformation (1517–1525),” (PhD iss., Freie-Universität, Berlin, 1956).

88. Richard G. Cole , “The Reformation in Print: German Pamphlets and Propaganda,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 66 (1975), 93–102.

89. Chrisman, Lay Culture ; Mark U. Edwards Jr. , “Catholic Controversial Literature, 1518–1555: Some Statistics,” ARG 79 (1988), 189–204 ; Mark U. Edwards Jr. , “Statistics on Sixteenth-Century Printing,” in P.N. Bebb and S. Marshall (eds), The Process of Change in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of Miriam Usher Chrisman (Athens, OH, 1989), 149–163 . For an earlier analysis of Luther’s literary output, Edwards had written a program for that specific purpose. See Luther’s Last Battles: Politics and Polemics, 1531–46 (Leiden, The Netherlands, 1983), 211.

90. R. A. Crofts , “Books, Reform, and the Reformation,” ARG 71 (1980), 21–36 ; R. A. Crofts , “Printing, Reform and the Catholic Reformation in Germany (1521-1545),” Sixteenth Century Journal 16 (1985), 369–381.

91. Lucien Febvre and H.-J. Martin , L’apparition du livre (Paris, 1974).

92. Bernd Balzer , Bürgerliche Reformationspropaganda: Die Flugschriften des Hans Sachs in den Jahren 1523–25 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1973) ; J. Schütte , “Schympf red”: Frühformen bürgerliche Agitation in Thomas Murners “Grossen Lutherischen Narren” (1522) (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1973).

93. See Rainer Wohlfeil , “Reformatorische Öffentlichkeit,” in Literatur und Laienbildung im Spätmittelalter und in der Reformationszeit , eds., Ludger Grenzmann and Karl Stackmann (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1984), 41–54 ; Rainer Wohlfeil , Einführung in die Geschichte der deutschen Reformation (Munich: Beck, 1981).

94. Köhler, ed., Flugschriften als Massenmedium ; Kohler, “Erste Schritte.”

95. Bernd Moeller , “Die frühe Reformation als Kommunikationsprozeß,” in Kirche und Gesellschaft im Heiligen Römischen Reich des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts, ed., Harmut Boockmann (Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), 148–164 ; Bernd Moeller , “Das Berühmtwerden Luthers,” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 15 (1988), 65–92 ; Thomas Hohenberger , Lutherische Rechtfertigungslehre in den reformatorischen Flugschriften der Jahre 1521–1522 (Tübingen, Germany: J. C. B. Mohr, 1996) is an excellent example of the Göttingen approach.

96. Andrew Pettegree and Matthew Hall , “The Reformation and the Book: A Reconsideration,” Historical Journal 47 (2004), 1–24.

97. Wolfgang Behringer , “Communications Revolutions: A Historiographical Concept,” German History 24.3 (2006), 333–374.

98. Timothy Wengert , ed., The Annotated Luther, Vol. 1: The Roots of Reform (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2015) . For translations, see Erika Rummel, Scheming Papists and Lutheran Fools . See also B. D. Mangrum and G. Scarizzi , eds, A Reformation Debate: Karlstadt, Emser, and Eck on Sacred Images (Toronto: Dovehouse Editions, 1991) . Reprinted in 1967; Otto Clemen , Flugschriften aus den ersten Jahren der Reformation , 4 vols. (Leipzig: Haupt, 1907–1911) can be found in university libraries. Recent anthologies include Adolf Laube and Hans‑Werner Seiffert , eds., Flugschriften der Bauernkriegszeit (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1975) ; Adolf Laube , Annerose Schneider , and Sigrid Looss , eds., Flugschriften der frühen Reformationsbewegung (1518–1524) , 2 vols. (Vaduz: Akademie-Verlag, 1983) ; Adolf Laube , Annerose Schneider , and Sigrid Looss , eds., Flugschriften vom Bauernkrieg zum Täuferreich (1526–1535) , 2 vols. (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1992) ; and Adolf Laube , Annerose Schneider , and Sigrid Looss , eds., Flugschriften gegen die Reformation (1525–1530) , 2 vols. (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2000) . Printed broadsheets, Max Geisberg and W. L Strauss , eds., The German Single-Leaf Woodcut: 1500–1550 (New York: Hacker Art, 1974).

99. Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachbereich erschienenen Drucke des 16 . Jahrhunderts , ed. Irmgard Bezzel , 22 vols. (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1983–2000) , abbreviated as VD16 . This is a digitized collection of 16th century German publications.

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The Importance of the Printing Press for the Protestant Reformation, Part Two

almost fifty identifiable printers of Luther's works in the 1520s printing in twelve separate locations...There are another seventy printers in various locations printing mostly Reformation tracts. Overall for the sixteenth-century, there are three hundred and ninety-one printers, eight hundred and ninety-four authors and one hundred and twenty-five cities....Eighty-two of the smaller locations where printers lived and worked have not been the subject of specific print research. The odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the contention that if a German printer published pamphlets especially in the 1520s, he published Protestant materials. What is often thought of as a war of pamphlets between the followers of Luther and the pope in Rome may be seen as a lopsided one.(5)

I have received the second and third parts of my Sermon on Confession from you and the first part from Melanchthon. I cannot say how sorry and disgusted I am with the printing. I wish I had sent nothing in German, because they print it so poorly, carelessly, and confusedly, to say nothing of bad types and paper. John the printer is always the same old Johnny. Please do not let him print any of my German Homilies, but return them for me to send elsewhere. What is the use of my working so hard if the errors in the printed books give occasion to other publishers to make them still worse?... I shall forward no more until I learn that these sordid mercenaries care less for their profits than for the public. Such printers seem to think: "It is enough for me to get the money; let the readers look out for the matter."(23)

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One Monk and his Fight Against the Church - Martin Luther

Martin luther, 95 theses, printing press, protestant reformation, european reformation unit.

Imagine that your younger sister has decided that she wants to buy a new doll, but your parents will not give her the money.  She decides to run a lemonade stand so that she can earn enough to get the doll.  Your parents agree, as long as she puts half the money that she earns into a savings account. 

For the first few days, the lemonade stand works really well!  Everyone in the neighborhood stops by to get some delicious lemonade, especially because it's the summer and it's been really hot for weeks.  Soon your sister has enough money to get the doll that she wanted, but she doesn't stop there. 

Because the lemonade stand worked so well, she decides to keep running it to make more money for toys.  You're starting to get worried.  Your sister is beginning to cheat some of her customers, like the rich old lady who lives down the street, by charging them extra.  She's also giving special favors to her friends, like free lemonade.  Worst of all, she's lying to your parents about how much money she is earning, so she doesn't have to put as much into her savings account. 

In the sixteenth century, the Catholic Church was becoming just like your sister's lemonade stand -- they were not keeping their promises.  One man started to notice the things wrong with the Church.  He noticed that they were giving favors to people who were rich.  He noticed that they were spending money on selfish things instead of giving it to the poor.   Martin Luther  was the name of the man who started a movement to change the problems he saw in the Catholic Church.

When you noticed the problems with your sister's lemonade stand, you knew you had to be very careful about how you pointed them out, otherwise your parents would think you were tattling.  You might even get in trouble instead of her!  So you spent a few days taking notes on the things she was doing wrong, and decided to make a list of complaints to show your parents.  This way they were much more likely to believe you. 

Martin Luther did almost the same thing with the Church.  If he ran around telling everyone what was happening, they might think he was not telling the truth, or that he did not know what he was talking about.  He might even get in trouble.  So Martin planned what he wanted to say very carefully, and he also made a list of all the problems he was seeing.   The  95 Theses  was a list of all the questions and ideas Martin Luther had to change the church.

Imagine that you wanted everyone in your neighborhood to know about the problems with your sister's lemonade stand, not just your parents.  You would have to find some way to make copies of your list.  You didn't want to write them all out by hand, because that would take way too much time.  Eventually, you went to the copy store and made hundreds of copies.  Now you can pass them out to all your neighbors. 

Martin had the same problem hundreds of years ago, but they did not have copiers back then.  In fact, if you wanted a copy of something written, the only way you could get it was to write it by hand.  That would be like you writing out the list hundreds or maybe even thousands of times!  Martin got really lucky, though.  Right around the time he was criticizing the church, there was a new invention that helped him a lot.   The  printing press  was a machine that allowed people to make many copies of things without writing them by hand.

Using the printing press, Martin made copies of his 95 Theses.  Soon, everyone had seen them!  Some people were really angry that Martin was saying bad things about the Church and wanted things to stay the same.  Others started to pay attention to the problems that had been there all along.  People got angry and decided to deal with it in different ways.  Some people protested against the Church, while others decided to start new churches.   The  Protestant Reformation  was the name of the movement that broke away from the Catholic Church to start new religions that would fix many of the problems they saw in the Catholic Church's beliefs and practices.

Just like passing out the list of what your sister was doing wrong would help make the neighborhood better, Martin Luther's list also made the Catholic Church better.  Your parents would make your sister fix her lemonade stand, just like the church fixed itself.  Also, your neighbors may start going to a different lemonade stand because they do not trust your sister any more, just like some people founded their own churches.  Either way, Martin Luther's 95 Theses made a huge difference in the history of Christianity. 

References:

KDG Wittenberg.  "The 95 Theses" luther.de, 1997.   < http://www.luther.de/en/95thesen.html>

Linder, Douglas O.  "The Trial of Martin Luther: An Account"  law2.umkc.edu, 2010.  < http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/luther/lutheraccount.html>

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The Importance of Having an Effective Printing Press in a University Community: A Case Study of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi

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Africa Bibliography, Research and Documentation

Hans M Zell

In the 1970s and 80s there was a lively academic publishing scene in Nigeria (and elsewhere in West Africa), with several new university presses being launched. Today however, as a cursory amount of research about the current state of university press publishing in Nigeria demonstrates, the picture is bleak. The research (conducted in April 2021) revealed that traditional university press publishing activities seem to have been almost completely abandoned in most cases, although presses still exist in the form of commercial operations offering design, typesetting, and printing and binding services to the university, as well as to other customers. Nigerian university presses operating today seem to be far removed from the ideals and primary responsibility of a university press, which should be to produce and disseminate knowledge of all kinds, and promoting a literate culture upon which the foundation of the university as a national institution must ultimately rest. Partly due to financial constraints and the demand to be self-sustained, many university presses have ceased to be publishing presses and have become printing presses. University administrators now view their presses as an opportunity for making money in times of dwindling resources, rather than as an outlet for the dissemination of scholarship. Publishing opportunities for African scholars by Western presses, and the availability of content within Africa, remains limited. The demise, and the now almost total lack of publishing output by Nigerian university presses, with most of them currently dormant or disbanded, can be said to be a major contributory factor to this unhappy situation. A two-part Appendix offers a select, critically annotated bibliography of scholarly publishing in Nigeria, and in other parts of Africa.

Francois B van Schalkwyk , Thierry M Luescher

While there are new and enabling conditions for university presses to increase production and to widen distribution, the question remains: How can African university presses make the most of these opportunities? Most likely, the answer lies in deploying the technological changes in production, distribution and marketing made possible by digitisation and network effects of the internet. At the same time, propelled by a growing perception in academia of ‘robber capitalism’ on the part of publishers as they protect their oligopoly in the face of dissolving spatial barriers and diminishing value add, we are witnessing a contrary trend: the emergence of the knowledge commons. However, this emergence takes place in an institutional context long dominated by an editorial logic and, in more recent times, by the logic of the market. A holistic way of approaching the question of how African university presses can reposition themselves in support of the broader shift of some African universities towards a greater focus on research, is to consider shifts in the dominant institutional logic in the academic publishing industry. Based on a baseline survey of university presses in Africa, in-depth case studies of selected university presses, and an analysis of the publishing choices made by African academics, this research project examined the opportunities and constraints faced by university presses in Africa. It provides an overview of the African university press landscape and shows that there is a small, active group of university presses. University presses in Africa are not yet making use of technological advances to reconfigure their production, distribution and marketing processes, nor are they experimenting with new publishing models such as open access. While case studies of selected university presses surfaced unsurprising challenges (such as scarce resources and limited capacity), they also show that university presses in Africa are constrained by institutional logics that are holding them back from experimenting with new ways of doing things.The research also reveals that an alarmingly high number of academic authors at one flagship research university in Africa are choosing to publish monographs with predatory publishers. The report concludes with a set of pragmatic recommendations; recommendations that are simultaneously attuned to the opportunities and to the realities of African university presses as revealed by the research conducted.

casestudies journal

From the beginning of human on this earth till today, various ways of communications has played a unique role. Among all, books made their valuable place in the hearts of society. These books not only carries the messages needed to be reached to their destination but also the prestigious information of the past in the form of history, biographies and much more making it possible to realize the past and making future more better. The advent of books is incomplete without the efforts of printing bureau. Printing bureaus have played a significant role in development and usability of books in history and even today. Number of books are printed and published on daily basis resulting in an intellectual growth in societies. Several printing bureaus have been seen by the time, some have marked their names through their quality of work and stability in profession. Printing Bureaus present at Higher Academic universities are also worth mentioning, serving not only the academics but the vast area of knowledge. University of Karachi-Pakistan is one of the leading academic university of Pakistan serving from past 60 years. The university is privileged to have its own printing bureau named "Bureau of Composition, Compilation and Translation.

Jacob Opele

ELK Asia Pacific Journal of Library Management and Information Technology, Vol. 1 Issue 2

Olakunle Alabi

This study seeks to investigate the methods of organizing newspaper as well as its uses in Redeemer’s University (RUN) and Babcock University (BU) Libraries. The study also seeks to find-out reasons why the users of the selected libraries are making use of the Newspapers and to what extent are their needs been met. The study adopts the use of Survey method. The sampling technique used in this research was random sampling. 20% of the selected libraries’ sitting capacity (Main & Serials Units) was used for this research, giving a total number of 170 i.e. 96 and 74 that cut across Colleges in Redeemer’s University and Babcock University respectively. Newspaper indexing and bounding are the common methods used in the selected libraries. Entertainment and Education information are kinds of common information sought by the students in RUN and Babcock. Furthermore, this study reveals that male students are more interested in Sport information than their female counterparts, whereas female students prefer Entertainment information than male students. The study find-outs that there is no significant difference in methods used in organizing newspapers and their uses by students among the selected private university libraries.

Dr. Ghulam Safdar , Ali Raza Bukhari

In the modern age, print media and electronic media are considers two edge of river that become together. But the print media is backbone of all kind of media. The basic objective of this research was to highlight the importance of print media in the modern age and to explore that in which extent print media is providing information and awareness to people. Survey research methodology used to gather the data and a sample size of 200editors and senior journalists are selected from Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta and Islamabad. The study concluded that print media is maintaining its status. Moreover, it is concluded that print media is the foundation of journalism on which rest of the media is developed including electronic media and social media. Print media give comprehensive news in the shape of analysis, editorials and columns. It is also noticed that giving more coverage to local news is the key point of popularity of print media among local people that is usually not highlighted by the electronic media. Whereas study concluded some hurdles that affecting the print media are low literacy rate, financial problems and limited circulation.

Fábio MASCARENHAS e Silva , Fabio M Silva

This article aims at investigating, through a literature analysis , how contemporary modes of production impact university presses considering the social, political and economic contexts. The methodological approach consisted of two stages of data collection from the Web of Science database: in the first stage we retrieved 42 items related to changes in university presses over the last few years. In the second stage we analyzed 62 papers, related to information technology, refined from the concept of Open Access as a socio-technical concept. Five categories were selected for the content analysis of the papers: a) publishing market; b) dynamics of publisher ; c) interaction with libraries; d) science communication , e) copyright. As a result, we discuss the advantages and potential of Open Access literature as of 2000, as well as the challenges for ideal, unrestricted and unlimited access to the intellectual production. We argue that further studies should focus on public and private relations, restricted access or Open Access, production resources, market, book prices, relations between publishing houses and other entities, institutions or companies, treatment of copyright, representation of society, committees and editorial boards.

University World News

A meeting hosted by Witwatersrand University Press held in Johannesburg on 30 August 2017, brought together a number of African scholarly publishers to discuss a wide-ranging study undertaken by François van Schalkwyk and Thierry Luescher entitled The African University Press https://zenodo.org/record/889744#.Wcdyr7J96pp (the database that is part of this project can be found at http://code4sa.org/african-university-presses/#all ). One of the report’s recommendations was to set up a network of university presses, as well as other scholarly publishers, to be called African Monograph Publishers Network/AMPNet, intended as a network for collaboration, experience-sharing, and advocacy. A University World News Special Report “African Scholarly Publishing – Network Aims to Strengthen African Scholarly Publishing” http://www.universityworldnews.com/index.php?page=Africa_Edition includes a general round-up of the meeting, accompanied by a series of articles and commentary contributed by some of the participants, including comments by Hans Zell (slightly edited in this version), and to which an appendix, “Pan-African and regional book professional organizations, groups, and networks in sub-Saharan Africa: An inventory”, has been added.

Against the Grain

Alex Holzman

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Khanty-Mansiysk: Why you simply must visit this northern land of mammoths

“I have been to Yugra many times. I was sworn in as a Siberian in a cedar forest,” producer Andrey Suleikov writes in the preface to a collection of legends called Yugra. It’s My Land . “I tasted lingonberries in the cold and could not tell whether the berries were coated in sugar or ice. I also enjoyed outdoor hot springs while taking a traditional Siberian bath." 

Fuel pumping stations

Sounds more like time travel than a present-day tourist trip, doesn’t it? But that is what Yugra is like: a fusion between prehistoric things like mammoths and modernity, which has brought oil, gas and new buildings. Even the region’s official name (which is quite long: the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area – Yugra) combines the present with the past.

Tying a ribbon is a national tradition

There is a beautiful legend about Yugra’s origins. In one very bright, warm and sunny city, twins of unprecedented beauty were born: a brother named Yug and a sister named Ra. At first, they grew up like ordinary small children, but with age they began to argue and fight, so much so that when they did flames flared up around them. The townspeople were afraid that they would burn everything down, so they exiled Yug and Ra to a remote northern land covered with ice and snow. The brother and sister illuminated this land with their light and made it warm so that people could come here to live. Yug and Ra stopped fighting and began living together in harmony. Since then, this northern land has been called Yugra.

When you look at the map, it may seem that Khanty-Mansiysk is located almost in the middle of Russia. However, the climate here is similar to regions of the Far North. In winter, the temperature here drops to below -40 degrees Celsius.

We asked local residents and people who know this region well to tell us more about it and to share some tips for tourists who come to visit.

Why should a foreigner visit Khanty-Mansiysk?

“If you want to feel the coldness and colors of Russian winter, then you should definitely stop by in our small cozy town,” says a local tattoo artist, Semyon Chepurnoy.

A Khanty man in a traditional dress

Yevgeny Zinovyev, a journalist and the former editor-in-chief of a local media outlet, says that Khanty-Mansiysk provides the opportunity to experience a real and not touristy part of Russia. “In winter, there are frosts, snowdrifts and wind. In summer, heat, midges and bears. At any time of the year, you can experience the everyday life and customs of the indigenous peoples: the Khanty and Mansi. And of course, in Khanty-Mansiysk you can get to know the backbone of modern Russia – its oil and gas sector."

“We have unique scenery here. Khanty-Mansiysk is located on seven hills and is surrounded by the taiga. There are a lot of fish in the rivers, and a lot of mushrooms, berries and pine nuts in the forests surrounding the city,” says local insurance company employee Sergey Yankovich.

View of the city and the Irtysh River

The harsh climate of the region influences how local residents relate to visitors. “Residents of the city are very good-natured and welcoming and are always ready to offer help in any situation, even to a stranger, because in the north, there is an unspoken rule: If you see that a person is in distress, be sure to help them, because tomorrow, it may be you in their place. The harsh climate and surrounding scenery leave no room for error, especially in winter,” Sergey says.

Things to see/do/taste in Khanty-Mansiysk

Mammoths at the Archeopark

According to Irina Pudova, a local resident and the author of a collection of legends called Yugra: It’s My land , the first thing to do in Khanty-Mansiysk is to see the local mammoths. Seven life-size bronze prehistoric animals "roam" the area near Samarovsky Hill on the grounds of the Archeopark complex. Here you will also find a prehistoric bison, a pack of wolves, a cave bear, two woolly rhinos and prehistoric people themselves.

Sculptures of bisons at the Archeopark cultural and tourist complex

“Then you could get something to eat,” Irina advises. “The thing to do is to go to any local restaurant of Siberian cuisine and ask for muksun. It is a valuable freshwater fish of the salmon family, which is highly prized by locals and tourists alike.”

Khanty-Mansiysk is a relatively new city and only received this status in 1950. Soo oil was discovered in the region, prompting a dramatic push in its development. Prior to that, there were just Siberian settlements built by Russia in the late 16th century. Irina is impressed that a modern city was built in such harsh conditions.

The Church of the Protection of the Holy Virgin

“Cultural objects, squares, houses - all this is unique. And everything is new, there is nothing very ancient here. Except for mammoths!” she says.

In addition to the Archeopark mentioned above, Yevgeny Zinovyev’s list of favorite places in the city includes the Museum of Geology, Oil and Gas, along with the Museum of Nature and Man and the centuries-old cedars in the Samarovsky Chugas natural park. He recommends checking out the views from the observation deck near the Monument to the Explorers of the Yugra Land and paying a visit to a local bathhouse.

'Red Dragon' bridge over the Irtysh River

Yevgeny also provided us a checklist of culinary delights that anyone visiting Khanty-Mansiysk should be sure to try:

• Muksun (in any form but best of all frozen and sliced as Stroganina).
• Wild berries (cranberry, cowberry, cloudberry).
• Venison (in any form but best of all stewed and sprinkled with frozen berries and pine nuts).

Sergey Yankovich recommends visiting the open-air ethnographic museum Torum Maa, which means "Sacred Land" in Mansi. “There you can get acquainted with the history of the city and the district, as well as with the life of the indigenous peoples of the Khanty and Mansi, who belong to the Finno-Ugric group,” Sergey says.

Torum Maa ethnic center

In addition, he advises anyone who comes to Khanty-Mansiysk to visit the spot where the Ob and Irtysh rivers meet, pay a visit to Misne Hotel’s restaurant and taste traditional dishes there, as well as dishes prepared by local fishermen and hunters while in the taiga.

According to Semyon Chepurnoy, the Valley of Streams natural park is another must for any visitor. It is one of local residents’ favorite recreation areas, where you can stroll along a dedicated footpath offering stunning views of the city. Semyon also advises trying pancakes at the GoodFood chain of cafes.

What are the best souvenirs?

“We all love something mystical and supernatural. There is a strong culture of shamanism here, so I think it’s cool to take with you some local amulets charged by a shaman—a bear claw or a pendant made of beads and deerskin,” says Irina Pudova.

A Khanty woman in the traditional dress selling souvenirs

Sergey Yankovich advises that authentic souvenirs can be found at the Crafts Center on Roznina Street. “There you can also see and even try on the national costumes of the Khanty and Mansi and try to solve traditional puzzles that representatives of the indigenous peoples made for their children.”

According to Yevgeny Zinovyev, the best souvenirs are Khanty and Mansi amulets, clothes, jewelry, as well as traditional local treats such as muksun, wild berries, pine nuts and venison.

Cowberry bush

For his part, Semyon Chepurnoy recommends bringing away memories and photographs as well as a little bit of Siberian Frost ❄.

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How to complete the Stop the Presses quest in Baldur's Gate 3

I've had enough of your disingenuous assertions.

• How to start the quest
• Breaking into Baldur's Mouth
• Changing the headline

The Baldur's Gate 3 Stop the Presses quest is all about sneaking into the city's newspaper, the Baldur's Mouth, to tamper with headlines and make yourself look good. Lord Gortash's nefarious influence has even spread to the press, and he's using it to pump out propaganda supporting his Steel Watchers and slander your good name. 

You don't have to sit back and take it, though. If you've got a sneaky character in your party—or even just some Scrolls of Invisibility—you can break into The Baldur's Mouth and tamper with the press. Here's how to complete the Stop the Presses quest in Baldur's Gate 3 and save your rep in the city.

How to start the Stop the Presses quest

You can begin the Stop the Presses quest by talking to Estra Stir near the Basilisk Gate waypoint where you enter the Lower City from Wyrm's Rock. She's easy to recognise since she's stood next to a paperboy. This journalist mentions that you're slated to feature prominently in the latest issue of Baldur's Mouth, though the article isn't flattering. Whatever you decide to do, the next time you long rest, the new edition of the paper will be printed . If the article isn't altered before that, it'll make you look like a real villain. At least you can intimidate the paperboy for a free copy.

How to break into the Baldur's Mouth

The obvious way to alter the Baldur's Mouth slander is to head to the newspaper itself, west down the street from where you met Estra, still fairly close to the Basilisk Gate waypoint. The editor, Ettvard Needle , won't appreciate you asking to change the headline and will kick you out of the building, leaving you with no choice but to break in. For the following section I recommend taking your sneakiest character solo .

On the south side of the Baldur's Mouth, you'll find a rooftop you can jump to, and then some wooden platforms that let you hop up the side of the building to the roof. On the south-east corner of the rooftop you'll find a wooden barricade you can break, allowing you to drop down into the basement elevator. Simply pull the lever inside to make your way down. 

Now, if you haven't blown up the Steel Watch Foundry yet, you'll have to sneak by some Steel Watchers, but it's relatively easy if you follow them along the corridors and hide inside the rooms at each end. Follow the first Steel Watcher north up the corridor and enter the room straight ahead. In the back corner you'll find some moveable boxes and a barricade to break, letting you into the next room. Make sure to grab the " Make Big Money by Trading with Adventurers " story in the Wicker Basket here. When ready, follow the second Steel Watcher south down the corridor into the main printing press room.

How to change the Baldur's Mouth headline

This section of the quest was a little bugged for me, but basically, if you saved Dolly Dolly Dolly—the pixie trapped in Kar'niss' Moon Lantern in Act 2—the enchanted printing press will offer to help you for free since she's a friend. However, if you leave the dialogue and talk to the press again, it'll act as if it doesn't know you, forcing you to convince it to help. 

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If you did save the pixie, make sure you have a replacement headline in your inventory when you speak to the press for the first time so you can use it straight away. You can find " Adventurers, Our Best Hope For the City " in the Wicker Basket behind the press if you want another headline choice.

If you didn't rescue Dolly Dolly Dolly, you have a couple of options:

• Convince the Printing Press: You can use either a difficulty rating 15 Deception or Intimidation check to convince the magical press to help.
• Print it yourself: You can tell the magical creature to leave the press and remove the negative headline using a difficulty rating 20 Sleight of Hand or Athletics check. 

Either way, you'll need to slot in one of those new favourable headlines you picked up and then sneak back out the same way you came in, jumping up the elevator to the roof, and down the wooden platforms to the street.

The next time you long rest, the paper will be printed, and you can go and grab a copy from any of the paperboys in the city. Make sure you also go back to see Estra Stir and Ettvard Needle to rub it in their faces.

Baldur's Gate 3 Soul Coins : Find them all Baldur's Gate 3 infernal iron : Karlach collectibles Baldur's Gate 3 owlbear cub : Befriend the bird Baldur's Gate 3 find Halsin : Where's the bear? Baldur's Gate 3 defiled temple : Solve the moon puzzle

Sean's first PC games were Full Throttle and Total Annihilation and his taste has stayed much the same since. When not scouring games for secrets or bashing his head against puzzles, you'll find him revisiting old Total War campaigns, agonizing over his Destiny 2 fit, or still trying to finish the Horus Heresy. Sean has also written for EDGE, Eurogamer, PCGamesN, Wireframe, EGMNOW, and Inverse.

Swen Vincke was worried that the 100-hour Baldur's Gate 3 would be too short, which is why Larian made a ton of extra areas they wound up cutting: 'I've notoriously always been bad at judging the length of our games'

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Self-improving AI method increases 3D‑printing efficiency

PULLMAN, Wash. — An artificial intelligence algorithm can allow researchers to more efficiently use 3D printing to manufacture intricate structures.

The Washington State University study, published in the journal Advanced Materials Technologies , could allow for more seamless use of 3D printing for complex designs in everything from artificial organs to flexible electronics and wearable biosensors. As part of the study, the algorithm learned to identify, and then print, the best versions of kidney and prostate organ models, printing out 60 continually improving versions.

“You can optimize the results, saving time, cost and labor,” said Kaiyan Qiu, co-corresponding author on the paper and Berry Assistant Professor in the WSU School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering.

The use of 3D printing has been growing in recent years, allowing industrial engineers to quickly convert customized designs on a computer to a wide range of products — including wearable devices, batteries and aerospace parts.

But for engineers, trying to develop the correct settings for their printing projects is cumbersome and inefficient. Engineers have to decide on materials, the printer configuration and the dispensing pressure of the nozzle, for instance — all of which affect the final product.

“The sheer number of potential combinations is overwhelming, and each trial costs time and money,” said Jana Doppa, co-corresponding author and Huie-Rogers Endowed Chair Associate Professor of Computer Science at WSU.

Qiu has done research for several years in developing complex, lifelike 3D-printed models of human organs. They can be used, for instance, in training surgeons or evaluating implant devices, but the models have to include the mechanical and physical properties of the real-life organ, including veins, arteries, channels and other detailed structures.

Qiu, Doppa, and their students used an AI technique called Bayesian Optimization to train and find the optimized 3D-printing settings. Once it was trained, the researchers were able to optimize three different objectives for their organ models — the geometry precision of the model, its weight or how porous it is and the printing time. Porosity of the organ model is important for surgery practice, for instance, because the model’s mechanical properties can change depending on its density.

“It’s hard to balance all the objectives, but we were able to strike a favorable balance and achieve the best possible printing of a quality object, regardless of the printing type or material shape,” said co-first author Eric Chen, a WSU visiting student working in Qiu’s group in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering. 

Alaleh Ahmadian, co-first author and WSU graduate student in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, added that the researchers were able to look at all the objectives in a balanced manner for favorable results and that the project benefited from its interdisciplinary perspective.

“It is very rewarding to work on interdisciplinary research by performing physical lab experiments to create real world impact,” she said.

The researchers first trained the computer program to print out a surgical rehearsal model of a prostate. Because the algorithm is broadly generalizable, they could easily change it with small tunings to print out a kidney model.

 “That means that this method can be used to manufacture other more complicated biomedical devices, and even to other fields,” said Qiu.

The work was funded by the National Science Foundation, WSU Startup and Cougar Cage Funds.

Media Contacts

• Kaiyan Qui , WSU School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering , 509-335-3223 , [email protected]
• Jana Doppa , WSU School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science , 509-335-1846 , [email protected]
• Sara Zaske , WSU News & Media Relations , 509-335-4846 , [email protected]

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Leveraging Additive Manufacturing in a Newly Designed and Commissioned Transonic Fan Research Facility

Despite the associated time, cost, and effort, experimental fan research remains necessary to validate computational models and physically develop new technologies. The need for a new fan research facility that would provide high quality experimental fan research at engine-representative speeds using detailed flow measurements was identified by the Office of Naval Research (ONR). The facility would be used to develop stall margin enhancement techniques, namely casing treatments to advance the field. In addition to support by ONR, Honeywell Aerospace donated a transonic fan rig and core exhaust plenum to make this project a reality.

The new research facility was designed and built around this new fan rig for investigations into casing treatments, inlet distortion, and aeromechanics research, as well as future projects that would make use of the new space. The funding package included a renovation of the build room in ZL1 and two brand new test cells constructed in previously empty space. All necessary equipment was designed, procured, and placed in the correct positions to ensure operability of the fan. The new space necessitated a mechanical checkout and commissioning process before conducting research projects.

In parallel to the development of the facility, a novel fan casing was designed to make use of rapid prototyping to experimentally test casing treatments. The fan casing assembly is made up of three metal components that remained fixed and six individual 3D printed plastic inserts that make up the flowpath surrounding the rotor. The geometry of each component was developed according to best-practices and computational structural analysis. Following commissioning of the fan test cell, the new fan casing was successfully implemented and tested over the full operating range of the fan.

Degree Type

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Mechanical Engineering

Campus location

• West Lafayette

Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair

Additional committee member 2, additional committee member 3, additional committee member 4, usage metrics.

• Mechanical engineering not elsewhere classified

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See all region register, peakvisor app, khanty-mansiysk autonomous okrug – ugra.

Welcome to the land of sheer silent whiteness. Its vast expanses are filled with fresh Arctic air, howling winds, and the spirit of true adventure. Come with us to the lands of the ancient Khanty and Mansi tribes that survived in this harsh climate of the Nether-Polar Urals . See the mountains that defy any logical or geological reason for their existence. Experience the wonders of this sparsely populated land where you can hardly see a human trace. Welcome to Yugra!

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Water resources, landmarks and tourism, major mountains, mount narodnaya, mount zaschita, mount neroyka, the pyramid mountain, samarovskaya mountain, ski and sports facilities, protected sites, reserves, national and natural parks, rivers and lakes, major cities, khanty-mansiysk.

The Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Area – Yugra (KhMAO) is located in the central part of the West Siberian Plain, stretching from west to east from the Ural Range to the Ob-Yenisei Watershed. The vast areas of this plain, as well as the Lower Priob region, are considered one of the most recently inhabited areas.

The Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Area (KhMAO) was established in 1930. Its name comes from two main northern indigenous peoples – the Khanty and the Mansi. From 1944 it was legally part of the Tyumen Region , but in 1993 the Area received autonomy and became a full-fledged territorial entity of the Russian Federation. It is a part of the Urals Federal District. The administrative centre is the city of Khanty-Mansiysk , whereas the largest city is Surgut. The word Yugra was introduced to the name of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Area in 2003 to pay tribute to the old name used by the locals to call the territories lying beyond the North Urals.

The KhMAO borders the Komi Republic in the north-west, the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District in the north, the Krasnoyarsk Area and the Tomsk Region in the east and south-east, the Tyumen Region in the south and the Sverdlovsk Region in the south-west.

The area of the territory is 534,801 sq.km, the length from north to south is 800 km, from west to east is 1400 km. The population of this huge territory is 1,674,676 people as of 2020, which is the same amount as people living in Barcelona or Munich.

The main part of the territory is a huge, poorly dissected plain where absolute elevation marks rarely exceed 200 meters above sea level. The western part of the KhMAO territory is characterized by low and middle mountainous terrains with some Alpine relief featured in the Subpolar Urals. Here are ridges and spurs of the mountain system of the North Urals and the Subpolar Urals. The maximum absolute elevations are on the border with the Komi Republic . Mount Narodnaya (1,895m) is the highest peak.

More than 800 species of higher plants grow in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area . Almost the entire territory is covered by taiga forests that occupy about 52% of the area. Spruce, fir, pine, cedar, larch, birch, alder grow here. In the northern parts of the area, the composition of the vegetation is greatly influenced by perennial permafrost. Light lichen grasslands which are used as deer pastures are widespread there. Tundra dominates in the mountainous and hilly areas. River floodplains and lowlands are characterized by meadow vegetation, the so-called water meadows. High floodplains of large rivers are mainly covered with woods that mainly feature willows, birches and aspens. Forests and swamps are rich in berries and various valuable plants, most of which are used in traditional indigenous medicine.

The animal world is typical for the Russian taiga zone. There are 369 species of vertebrates. Mammals are represented by 60 species (28 of them are commercial species). The most common and valuable of them are wild reindeer, elk, fox, sable, fox, squirrel, marten, ermine, Siberian weasel, polecat, mink, weasel, otter, hare and others. Wolverine and West Siberian river beaver are included in the Red Book of Russia.

There are 256 bird species in the region, including 206 sedentary and nesting species. Some rare bird species are listed in the Red Book. There are 42 species of fish in rivers and lakes. Of these, 19 species are commercial, among them are starlet sturgeon, lelema, muksun (whitefish), pelyad, chir, lake herring, wader, tugun, freshwater cod, pike, ide, roach, bream, fir, perch, ruff, golden and silver crucian carp, carp (carp is grown in the cooling ponds of the Surgutskaya and Nizhnevartovskaya hydroelectric plants). Sturgeon is listed in the Red Book. There is an abundance of mosquitoes and gnats in the area, the greatest activity of which is in the second half of summer.

Yugra can boast of over 2 thousand large and small rivers, the total length of which is 172,000 km. The main rivers are the Ob (3,650 km), the Irtysh (3,580 km). These are some of the largest rivers in Russia. Other significant rivers include the tributaries of the Ob (the Vakh, Agan, Tromyogan, Bolshoy Yugan, Lyamin, Pim, Bolshoy Salym, Nazym, Severnaya Sosva, Kazym rivers), the tributary of the Irtysh (the Konda River) and the Sogom River. Ten rivers are over 500 km long. All the Yugra rivers with the exception of the rivers in the Ural part of the region are characterized by rather slow currents, gentle slopes, some surge wave phenomena, spring and summer floods. The Ob River basin extends over a distance of 700-200 km from the mouths of its tributaries. Such abundance of water facilitates the appearance of floodplain swamps and seasonal lakes.

The region's swamps are predominantly of the upper and transitional type. Those water basins occupy about a third of the region. About 290,000 lakes with the area of more than 1 ha are surrounded by swamps and forests. The largest lakes are Tursuntsky Tuman, Levushinsky Tuman, Vandemtor and Trmemtor. The deepest lakes are Kintus (48 m) and Syrky Sor (42 m). However, most of the lakes (about 90%) are modest and quite small and have no surface runoff.

The area is rich in resources of fresh, mineral and thermal underground waters, which are still insignificantly used.

The climate is moderately continental. Winters are harsh, snowy and long, and summers are short and relatively warm. The territory is protected from the west by the Ural Mountains but its openness from the north has a significant impact on the climate formation because cold air masses from the Arctic freely penetrate the area. The flat character of the terrain with a large number of rivers, lakes and swamps also has its impact. Most of the precipitation falls during the warm seasons. But even with a small amount of precipitation, their evaporation is very low, which as a result contributes to the formation of the zone of excessive moisture throughout the Yugra. The snow cover is stable from late October to early May, its height varies from 50 to 80 cm. The region is characterized by a rapid change of weather conditions, especially in transitional seasons (autumn and spring), as well as during the day. Late spring and early autumn frosts are rather frequent and can happen even until mid-June. Average January temperatures range from -18ºC to -24ºC (0 F to -11 F) and can reach -60ºC to -62ºC (-76 F to -80 F) when the northern cold air masses break through. The average temperature in July, the warmest month of the year, ranges from +15ºC to +20ºC (+59 F to +68 F) and on very rare days can reach a maximum temperature of +36ºC (+97 F). The prevailing wind direction is north in summer and south in winter.

The weather in the mountains is quite changeable and cool even in summer. The best time to visit the region's mountains is between July and mid-August.

The Yugra of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area has a huge natural resource potential. These are oil and gas deposits, forests, gold and iron ore deposits, as well as bauxites, copper, zinc, lead, niobium, tantalum, brown and hard coal deposits, rock crystal, quartz and piezo quartz, peat deposits, etc. The region has plenty of natural resources. In terms of natural gas reserves, the Yugra ranks second in the Russian Federation after the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District .

The industry is dominated by oil and gas production, power generation and processing industries, including woodworking except for pulp and paper production.

The Khanty-Mansi area has very developed tourism of all kinds. There is a modern infrastructure for cultural exploration as well as for active recreation.

Fans of sports and eco-friendly tourism will be able to conquer majestic mountains and raft down picturesque rivers, enjoy the beauty of nature in nature reserves and natural parks. The hills and mountains of this area open up endless opportunities for skiing and snowboarding.

The mountainous part of the Subpolar Urals located on the territory of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area is very beautiful. The highest peaks of the Ural Mountains are situated here.

Being the highest point of the whole Urals, Mount Narodnaya (1,895 m), also known as Naroda and Poenurr and translated as People's Mountain is territorially situated in the Subpolar Urals, on the border of the Yugra Area and the Komi Republic . It is the highest point in European Russia outside the Caucasus. This leads to its large topographic prominence of 1,772 metres (5,814 ft).

The top of the mountain is half a kilometre from the border towards Yugra. As for the name of the mountain, scientists could not come to a common opinion for a long time, so there are two versions. According to one version, in the Soviet years, an expedition of pioneers gave the mountain a name in honour of the Soviet people - Narodnaya (the stress is on the second syllable). According to the other version, even before the arrival of the first Soviet tourists, the peak was named after the River Naroda (the stress is on the first syllable) flowing at the foot of the mountain. The Nenets peoples called the River Naroda Naro, which means a thicket or a dense forest, and the Mansi peoples called it Poengurr or Poen-urr, which translates as the top, or head. The maps used to refer to it as Mount Naroda or Mount Naroda-Iz. Nowadays, it appears everywhere as Narodnaya.

In the 1980s, someone set a bust of Lenin on the top of the mountain. Its remains can be found there to this day. There is one more symbolic relic there – some Orthodox believers erected a worship cross on top of Mount Narodnaya after a Procession of the Cross.

The slopes of the mountain are steeper in the north-east and south-west and there are many steep rocks on them. The south-eastern and northern parts of the mountain are more gentle but they are also covered with scree. Be vigilant and careful when climbing! On the slopes of the mountain, there are many not only boulders but also caverns filled with clear water as well as ice. There are glaciers and snowfields. From the north-eastern part of the mountain, you can observe Lake Blue near which tourists and travellers like to make bivouacs.

Mesmerizing with its beauty and inaccessibility, it attracts many tourists and fans of active recreation. This majestic mountain is quite remote from the settlements, so getting to it is not an easy task. The mountain is located in the Yugyd Va National Park , so it is necessary to register in advance and get a visit permit from the park administration. How to get to the park administration and get a permit, read the article on the Yugyd Va National Park .

Mountain Zaschita (1,808 m) is the second-highest peak in the Ural Mountains, after Mount Narodnaya . Mysteriously, the name of the mountain, which roughly translates as Defense or Protection Mount, does not correlate in any way with the Mansi names of the nearby mountains and rivers. The origin of the name is unknown. There are some speculations but we will consider just one of them. On the map of the Northern Urals which was made by the Hungarian researcher Reguli the closest peak to Mount Narodnaya was called gnetying olu. Its location coincides with that of the present-day Mount Zaschita . The name gnetying olu in the Mansi can be deciphered as a mountain on which there is some help from ice. The mountain is believed to protect deer grazing on glaciers from mosquitoes. So, early topographers called the mountain more briefly – Mount Defense. Indeed, the slopes of this mountain are covered with a lot of snow and glaciers (the Yugra, Naroda, Kosyu, Hobyu glaciers and others). And it is here that the Mansi shepherds bring their deer which can rest on glaciers and snow. Summarizing all the above, we can say that Zaschita Mount is to some extent protection for deer from mosquitoes. The very name Zaschita appeared on maps with the beginning of hiking tours in the Subpolar Urals.

Mount Neroyka (1,645 m) is 100 km from Neroyka village, the closest tourist base to this peak. In the 1950s, people who were engaged in quartz mining near the mountain worked and lived in this base. Later, a gravel road was built from the village of Saranpaul to the mountain for large-scale development of the quartz deposit. In recent years, the road has not been much used and is practically not cleaned from snow in winter. There has been a plant built 20 km down from the mountain for primary processing of quartz with the use of nanotechnologies. There is an annual big camping event near the mountain. It is organized by the Tourism Department of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area. You can have a 1-hour helicopter ride to the mountain from the village of Saranpaul. Should you wish to fly from the city of Khanty-Mansiysk , be prepared to fly over the taiga for 2.5-3 hours.

Quite inquisitive tourists happened to discover, by a lucky chance, a Pyramid similar to that of Cheops but four times bigger. It is located on the territory of the Narodo-Ityinsky Ridge. The closest to the pyramid is the village of Saranpaul. The sizes of the found pyramid are as follows: the height is 774 m, in comparison to the Egyptian pyramid which is 147 m; the length of a lateral edge is 230 m whereas the Egyptian pyramid is 1 km. The pyramid is located precisely according to the cardinal directions, there is not a single degree deviation at that. The origin of the pyramid is unknown, scientists are still making assumptions. No traces of human activity were found near the pyramid. The only way to get here at this time is by helicopter.

Samarovskaya Mountain is another wonder that is baffling many people. It is dividing the city of Khanty-Mansiysk into northern and southern parts. Few now living residents know that in the old days the highest part of the modern city used to bear a plural name of the Samarovsky Mountains among which there were Mount Palenina, Komissarskaya, Miroslavskaya, Filinova, and Romanova. Originally, there was a village called Samarovo amidst these mountains. Until now, many issues bewilder both residents and scientists. How could a mountain form in the middle of the West Siberian Plain? What is inside it? Won't the weight of the buildings erected on the top of the mountain affect its height? The uniqueness of Samarovskaya Mountain is that it consists of numerous large stones, boulders, rocks that are absolutely foreign to this area. Scientists have not yet come to a consensus on the mountain’s origin.

The Yugra is very famous for its ski resorts, the main of which are:

• The Cedar Ravine ski resort (Surgut city, Naberezhny Ave. 39/1)
• Three Mountains (Trekhgorie) ski resort (30 km from Nizhnevartovsk, Ermakovsky settlement)
• Stone Cape (Kamenniy Mys) ski resort (near the city of Surgut)
• Pine Urman ski resort ( Khanty-Mansiysk , Sportivnaya Str., 24)

The far-away lands of the Yugra are the blessed sanctuaries for many animals as the area is rather hostile to a human There are reserves, natural parks, wildlife sanctuaries here that aim to protect the national treasures of the lands. Having visited these regions once, you would crave for coming back again and again to feel that unique sense of unity with nature, to forget about the urban fuss and and hustles whatsoever. The harsh but beautiful nature of this extraordinary area leaves an indelible trace in the soul of every person.

On the territory of the district there are 25 specially protected natural areas, the most famous of them are:

• The reserves are two: the Malaya Sosva Reserve and the Yugan Reserve, the latter was established in 1982 as the largest reserve of taiga landscapes. The purpose of the reserves was to study unobtrusively and carefully preserve the endemic flora and fauna without disturbing natural processes. Hunting and economic activities are prohibited here, which is important for the preservation of natural ecosystems.
• The natural parks are the Samarovsky Chugas Nature Park, the Siberian Sloping Hills (Uvaly), the Numto (also called Lake Numto), and the Kondinskie Lakes.

These reserves and natural parks offer tourists their own excursion programs to make visiting their territory much more enjoyable and educational.

The Samarovsky Chugas Nature Park is located in the center of Khanty-Mansiysk , on a small hill between the Ob and Irtysh rivers.

The territory of the Siberian Sloping Hills (Uvaly) natural park is 350 km away from the city of Khanty-Mansiysk . You can get there by helicopter or by plane. The office of the park is located at 7a Pionerskaya Street, Nizhnevartovsk.

The Kondinskie Lakes Natural Park is located 380 km from Khanty-Mansiysk . Half of the park is covered with swamps, but there is also a recreational area. There you can rest, swim, do some amateur fishing, picking berries (cowberries, cranberries) and mushrooms is permitted. There is only one independent walking route here, it runs for 3 km in the deep forest. It is a cool place for kids since the park is equipped with sports grounds, a pool and a small zoo where the kids can interact with brown bear cubs. What else, try the TaiPark, it is a rope course running at the height of 2.5 meters, having 15 stages, the full length is 125 meters. There is an opportunity to order water walking tours in the town of Sovetsky, which can be reached by train from Khanty-Mansiysk .

The Numto Nature Park is located almost in the center of the West Siberian Plain, in the Beloyarsk district of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area, 300 km from the city of Surgut and 200 km from the town of Beloyarsk. It is located on the border of Yugra and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Area. The administration of the park is located at 2, Beloyarsky micro-district, 4a. The territory of the natural park is a treasure trove of archaeological and ethnocultural monuments. As of today, there have been discovered 20 architectural monuments, including fortified and not fortified settlements, places of worship abandoned by the peoples who lived here from the Stone Age to almost the present day. Researchers have also found 65 monuments of ethnic value, the main of which are worship objects, sacred places and cemeteries.

The Malaya Sosva Reserve includes several subordinated territories and sanctuaries, including Lake Ranghe-Tour. The reserve offers a 4-km walking guided route that gets the visitors introduced to the typical features and characteristics of flora and fauna of the region. The route is called Bear Trail and you can spot bears there (don’t come close though, we’ve already written how to behave if you meet a bear in the wild). Also, you will see the River Malaya Sosva, some marshes, ancient cultural monuments and other nice sights. Permission to visit the reserve can be obtained from the administration of the reserve at Lenina Str. 46, town Sovetskiy.

As to the Yugan Nature Reserve , it is inaccessible to common hikers who are afraid of flying since there are no roads to it. The only way to get there is taking a helicopter ride. You also must obtain a permit in the administration of the reserve, go accompanied by employees of the reserve, and only on special transport of the reserve (motorboat, snowmobile). The central manor of the Reserve and the administration are located in the village of Ugut. To get to this village, you should first go to the town of Surgut, then go to the town of Pyt-Yakh, and from it there is a road to the village of Ugut. It is about 100 km from Ugut to the southern border of the reserve i, and another 25 km to the nearest cordon. The administration works from Monday to Friday. You can request a permit via mail at [email protected] , order a guided tour at [email protected]

The Yugra lands are heaven for water sports aficionados. They can have some awesome fishing or go rafting along such rivers as: the river Naroda, the Deep Sabun, etc.

The Naroda River is 140 km long. It is the left tributary of the Manya River located in the Ob River basin. The river has its origin on the south-western slope of Mount Narodnaya . It is a mountain-taiga river with rapids, swifts, numerous rolls, which attracts interest among water tourists. However, it is usually not rafted very often.

The Deep Sabun River flows through the territory of the Siberian Sloping Hills Nature Park. The park has developed multi-day water routes. It is possible to raft along the river in summer and to go skiing along it in winter.

The Kondinskie Lakes are a system of lakes along the left bank of the Konda River. The largest lake is the Arantur, with pine forests on the northern side and sandy beaches well equipped for a nice relaxing me-time. The water heats up well in summer. The small river Okunevaya and the river Maly Akh flow into the lake. The Maly Akh comes in on the west side and connects lake Arantur with Lake Pon-Tour. This lake is the richest in fish, and there is also a parking lot for fishermen here. The streams connect Pon-Tour with small lakes Krugloe and Lopukhovoye. When you look at Lopukhovoe lake, you feel as if you have found yourself in a fabulous place: more than half of its surface is covered with white lilies, as well as yellow flowers of the water-beans. Then the river Big Akh, which flows into the river Konda, connects all the lakes into a single system. Along the river there are many archeological monuments such as forts and settlements which have paths to them. The southernmost lake of the park is Ranghe-Tour.

Yugra is not the easiest destination and not the most accessible, but the effort is well worth it. You should first get to the capital of Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Area – the city of Khanty-Mansiysk either by air or by train.

Khanty-Mansiysk is based on the premises of the former village Samarovo founded in 1582. It used to be the territory of the Khanty people and a pit stop for coachmen who rode their wagons across the country. The village was founded by Russian Count Samara, thus the name Samarovo. The modern city actually began to develop in 1930 because amidst the Siberian taiga there finally started to appear stone houses on the high bank of the Irtysh River. In 1940, the village was renamed into Khanty-Mansiysk by the name of the peoples living on this territory – the Khanty and the Mansi, and in 1950 it received the status of a town.

The city has several attractions. Mount Samarovskaya is probably the biggest natural and scientific wonder. It divides the city in two parts and causes many concerns for urban developers who always wonder whether this mountain can move making the buildings slide or even sink in.

Another beauty is the century-old cedar grove that is within the city limits. The grove is a part of the natural park Samarovsky Chugas. The word chugas in the language of the Khanty means a lonely hill in the low river floodplain.

The park is one of the main attractions of the city, it hosts an open-air ethnographic museum called the Torum Maa, a cultural and tourist complex called Archaeopark, a biathlon center. Kids and adults, nature lovers and fans of culture love this place dearly.

A memorial sign to Yugra's discoverers is installed on top of the Samarovsky Chugas. It is a tall stele pyramid divided into three portions. On the lower level, there is a restaurant, on the second level is a small museum, and on the third level there is an observation deck, 40 m above the ground, with a magnificent view of the Irtysh River and the river port. The pyramid is decorated by the bas-relief depicting the discoverers of the region, from the 16th-century Count Samara to the geologists of the 20th century.

Another trademark of Khanty-Mansiysk is the State Museum of Nature and Man. The museum hosts a gallery and a workshop of a famous artist G. Rayshev.

The city has a lot of small monuments generously spread around the city. There is the Khanty family resting on a camp, this monument is near the airport building. You can take a pic at the Golden Tambourine located at the intersection of Gagarin Street and Mira Street. Connoisseurs of culture should also visit the Sun – the Theatre of Ob-Ugrian Peoples, it is the world's first professional theatre of Khanty and Mansi peoples. And if you are travelling with kids, the Khanty-Mansiysk Puppet Theatre is a must-visit. In the period from May to October, you can take a boat ride to the confluence of two rivers – the Ob and the Irtysh. Yugra Service Co. operates such cruises, you can find more information locally at their address Tobolsk Trakt street 4, Khanty-Mansiysk .

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