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    Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe--and Started the Protestant Reformation
    Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe--and Started the Protestant Reformation
    Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe--and Started the Protestant Reformation
    Audiobook11 hours

    Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe--and Started the Protestant Reformation

    Written by Andrew Pettegree

    Narrated by Paul Hecht

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A revolutionary look at Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the birth of publishing, on the eve of the Reformation's 500th anniversary When an obscure monk named Martin Luther tacked his "theses" on the door of the Wittenberg church in 1517, protesting corrupt practices, he was virtually unknown. Within months, his ideas spread across Germany, then all of Europe; within years, their author was not just famous, but infamous, responsible for catalyzing the violent wave of religious reform that would come to be known as the Protestant Reformation and engulfing Europe in decades of bloody war. Luther came of age with the printing press, and the path to glory of neither one was obvious to the casual observer of the time. Andrew Pettegree is perhaps our most distinguished living historian of the print revolution, but he launched his career as a historian of the Reformation. That double vision positions him to comprehend this epic event, not simply as a religious story but also as a story about how ideas were carried and spread in new ways, by new things-things called mass-produced books. Printing was, and is, a risky business-the questions were how to know how much to print and how to get there before the competition. Pettegree illustrates Luther's great gift not simply as a theologian, but as a communicator, indeed, as the world's first mass-media figure, its first brand. He recognized in printing the power of pamphlets, written in the colloquial German of everyday people, to win the battle of ideas. But that wasn't enough-not just words, but the medium itself was the message. Fatefully, Luther had a partner in Wittenberg in the form of artist and businessman Lucas Cranach, who together with Wittenberg's printers created the look of Luther's pamphlets, which included the distinct highlighting of the words "Martin Luther of Wittenberg" on the title page. Cranach also created the iconic portraits of Luther that made the reformer such a familiar figure to his fellow Germans. Together, Luther and Cranach created a product that spread like wildfire-it was both incredibly successful and widely imitated. Soon Germany was overwhelmed by a blizzard of pamphlets, with Wittenberg at its heart; the Reformation itself would blaze on for more than a hundred years. Publishing in advance of the Reformation's 500th anniversary, Brand Luther fuses the history of religion, of printing, and of capitalism--the literal marketplace of ideas--into one enthralling story, revolutionizing our understanding of one of the pivotal figures and eras in all of human history.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateOct 27, 2015
    ISBN9781501904653
    Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe--and Started the Protestant Reformation
    Author

    Andrew Pettegree

    Andrew Pettegree, FBA, is one of the leading experts on Europe during the Reformation. He currently holds a professorship at St Andrews University where he is the director of the Universal Short Title Catalogue Project. He is the author of The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself (winner of the Goldsmith Prize) and Brand Luther: 1517, Printing and the making of the Reformation, among other publications.

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    Reviews for Brand Luther

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      A unique look at the Protestant Reformation through the rise of print media and the dominance of “little” Wittenberg.. So interesting well researched, and well told!
    • 4/5
      A fascinating and informative look at the Reformation from a technological perspective. Given the importance of music, both liturgical and domestic, to Luther himself as well as to the Reformation movement, it's unfortunate that the subject appears only briefly in the final part of the book. Nothing at all is said of the development of the sub-specialty of music printing.
    • 2/5
      An interesting but somewhat repetitive history of the Reformation that does not at all live up the implication in its title, i.e., that Martin Luther somehow defined his brand and marketed it to the benefit of the Reformation.
    • 5/5
      This is a carefully sculpted and lucid biography of Martin Luther poised against the background of the printing press and books in Germany circa 1500. Luther, a bright intellectual and young Augustinian monk posted his thesis against indulgences and their abuse on the cathedral door at Wittenberg. It helped to churn an already current of criticism toward Rome, tapped into the rise of political power by the Princes in Germany and eventually unleashed a schism of doctrinal divisiveness that became known as the Protestant Reformation. Luther was a master of media manipulation through the printing press with the knowledge that the “oxygen of publicity was a matter of life and death.” He also paid attention to the education of girls, raising the level of literacy where his church took hold. His use of German rather than Latin reached out to the ordinary people of the land. Throughout the book there are illustrations of the fine woodcuts that helped popularize his writings. Luther read the political scene very well and was skilled at energizing market forces in his behalf. As one who participates in ecumenical dialogue, I found the book very helpful in gaining a clearer picture of Luther with human qualities rather than a rigid dogmatic figure of History. Pettegree’s book is a timely publication for the 500-year Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017. I purchased this for my personal library.