Germany Guide
Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland
The Gutenburg Museum and Druckladen
Address: Liebfrauenplatz 5
Opening time: Tues– Sat 9am–5pm, Sun 11am–3pm
Price: €5
Telephone: 06131/12 26 44
The real highlight of a visit to Mainz is the Gutenburg Museum, which celebrates the work of the city's most famous son. It was in the early fifteenth century that Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith by trade, began work on developing a printing press. Working in secret he effectively pioneered several technologies simultaneously: the development of moveable metal type; the moulds to produce them; oil-based inks that would take to the type and then the page; and the technology of the actual printing press, which adapted the techniques used in wine presses and the like.
It's fair to say that the results changed the world forever, enabling information to spread more quickly and be controlled less easily, and meaning literacy became important in all levels of society. The results proved to be remarkably democratizing and one of its earliest unforeseen effects was to smooth the passage of the Protestant Reformation, with the knock-on effects of popularizing written German and galvanizing the development of a Germanic identity.
The museum itself is mainly a tribute to the technology, but it goes far beyond Gutenberg and the historical presses of the time, with displays encompassing earlier Asian printing and some hand-copied manuscripts, which became a dying art. But the museum's greatest single showpiece is a copy of Gutenberg's first major work, the 1455 forty-two-line Bible, named for the number of lines on each page.
The hands-on extension of the Gutenberg Museum is the Druckladen (Printing Shop; Mon– Fri 9am–5pm, Sat 10am–3pm; by donation of around €3–5; 06131/12 26 86, www.druckladen.mainz.de), where you can hand-set type to produce posters, cards and the like. It's a fun setup, with a relaxed atmosphere, and you're encouraged to get stuck in by enthusiastic staff who will happily guide you through the process. Even if that doesn't appeal or sounds too messy (aprons are provided), it's worth browsing the range of hand-printed items available for sale.