Term Catalogue - German Messkataloge, 1564 To 1860

German Messkataloge, 1564 To 1860

The book trade of the German speaking territories was for more than a century the model of all further European developments. The technological achievement of the printing press spread in Germany without the focus on a capital. Germany had cultural centre but a network of cities and territories in different affiliations. A fragmented decentralised geographical space had to be provided with books. Relatively small towns of 20.000 to 40.000 inhabitants created as early as the 1470s and 1480s the basic network of the new trade. Central fairs in Nördlingen, Frankfurt and Leipzig offered publishers from all over Germany, Austria and Switzerland in the course of the 16th century the option to change books they had published and thus to widen the scope of titles they could sell in their respective shops at home.

The first Term Catalogue published by Georg Willer in Augsburg in 1564 was supposed to inform his customers in Augsburg about books he had brought home from the last Frankfurt fair. Within the next two years his catalogue became an interesting platform Frankfurt traders would use to observe the market. Willer arranged to have his catalogue printed in Frankfurt where it soon turned from a retrospective into a prospective medium, into a catalogue issued to list all the books that would be offered on the upcoming fair.

His first catalogue showed a strong Latin production. Almost 73% percent of the titles he listed were published in the language of erudition. Most of the books fell into the theology sections. The four university faculties theology, law, medicine and - embracing all other subjects - philosophy set the catalogue's basic structure. Literature in the modern sense had no category of its own.

Willer's project attracted competitors, three of whom gained the power to challenge his project at the turn into the 17th century: An independent catholic platform appeared first in Mainz and then in Frankfurt. The city of Frankfurt began to promote a "privileged" imperial catalogue trying to use the catalogues as a platform of censorship. The 1590 saw, thirdly, the arrival of a new catalogue designed to serve the Frankfurt and Leipzig book fairs - published from 1594 to 1860 in Leipzig.

The Leipzig fairs won the competition in the course of the 17th century. The unified catalogue issued in Leipzig became the central platform of information about books published in the course of this competition.