Gutenberg Museum

July 20, 2019

I really wanted to go to the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz this weekend. Malia wanted to go to the BTS store in Frankfurt. Jared wanted to stay home. It was hard to get on the same page.

The good thing was we all woke up early. But Jared wasn't in the best of moods. Regardless we started the drive at 10am towards Mainz (My-n-s). Mainz is about a one hour drive from Otterberg via the autobahn (A61/63), so it was a short drive. Finding parking is a little difficult in the downtown areas mainly because we don't know where they are. Although I do have to say there are many parking structures in the area, you just have to find them.

After we parked we exited the parking structure to the Rhine River. LOL, only in Europe can you exit something mundane and walk into a thousand years of history a few feet away. As we were walking, we notice this wine booth. Everyone was getting their drink on and it was only 11a in the morning. People in Germany love to drink alcohol.

If you don't know, Johanness Gutenberg is the most famous person to come out of Mainz. However, there isn't much documentation of him in Mainz. People didn't even know what he looked like. Portraits of him only surfaced one hundred years after he died. I guess the artist who painted him made it up? What people did know was that he owned a printing business with someone in Strasbourg, but then the business went bad, his business partner sued him and Gutenberg went in financial ruin (Museum tour information). Although Gutenberg had probably the most important invention in the last one thousands years, he wasn't able to capitalize on it, therefore he didn't live a rich and famous life.

The museum has 4 levels. Entry was cheap €10 for a family. €3.50 for the audio. I highly suggest the audio guide because everything in the museum is German, although many of the exhibits had some explanation in English. The first level had a replica of the printing press and that was awesome. The second level is what I came to see. Two originals of the Gutenberg Bible. The first one was a complete set with no missing pages, there are two volumes. The second one I think I heard it was a complete set too, but I'm not too sure about it. Even though we weren't suppose to take pictures, when the staff member in the room took a short break, I snapped a few pictures. There's only 49 bibles left and most of them are incomplete.

The third level, although not important was of importance to me. It was about Bi (Pi) Cheng. I had no idea who he was. According to the exhibits, he was the first person to invent movable block type, about 1000 years before Gutenberg. The biggest problem with Bi Cheng's invention wasn't the invention itself, it was that the Chinese alphabet has over 1000 characters, it would be hard to create movable block to make a book. There was a huge difference between the two inventions, Bi Cheng's movable block was made out of clay while the Gutenberg movable block was made out of metal. In the end, many Chinese thought it would be easy to write out their books instead of stamping it.

The most interesting story to come out of the museum for me was the binding parties these scholars had when creating their books. The fourth level was the different binding machines. On display, was this tankard. Before the binding session began, a tankard would be filled up with some type of alcohol (wine or beer) and people would drink until the binding was completed. It was like a keg party, only more productive.

After the museum, we bought some peaches and apricots at the farmer's market. The amount of sweet juice coming out of these fruits was amazing. I'm thinking we have to capitalize on these fruits because I'm not sure what is in store for us over the winter.