5

Letters, Colour and Paper

In a parallel universe, Leipzig would not have been built on seams of coal, but on deposits of countless books; and printing ink would flow through the veins of the people of Leipzig instead of blood. Exaggerated? Just maybe.

The city has been involved in book printing since the invention of the printing press. Although Frankfurt led the way for centuries, Leipzig followed with Luther and the Reformation. So Melchior Lotter set the famous 95 Theses in his Leipzig workshop, along with many other writings by the reformer.

Leipzig’s great book era began three hundred years later. The number of publishers exploded, the manufacturing industry expanded, all settled in a district that was later called the Graphic Quarter. A 1900 address book lists almost a thousand publishers and bookshops, and around four hundred printing and bookbinding companies. Shortly before the First World War, one in ten Leipzig residents worked with or on books; in 1914 the city hosted the world’s largest book fair and thirteen years later the International Book Art Exhibition.

The first turning point came in 1933, and Leipzig never recovered from the second in December 1943: the Graphic Quarter was reduced to rubble and ashes, along with around 50 million books. After the war, most publishers went to West Germany and Frankfurt took the crown again. Nevertheless, the city remained the most important publishing center in the GDR alongside Berlin. The new beginning after 1989 and many newly established publishers changed the situation again. But Henselmann’s skyscraper still stands like an open book above the city, as if it had grown out of the magical book seams.