The German city of Mainz lies on the banks of the Rhine River.
It is best known for its wine, cathedral and for being the home of Johann Gutenberg, who brought the printing press to Europe.
Although these things may seem unrelated at first, in this case they overlap, merge and influence each other.
Those three elements intersect during market days, when local growers and winemakers sell their wares in the main square around the magnificent St. Martin's Cathedral.
Diagonally across the street is the Gutenberg Museum, named after the city's most famous resident, born in Mainz around 1399, who died here 555 years ago, in 1468.
Gutenberg invented the first European printing press with movable type, which started the printing revolution and marked a turning point in the Western world - the transition from medieval times to modernism.
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Although the Chinese had used woodblock printing many centuries earlier, with a fully printed book in 868 found in a cave in northwestern China, movable type printing never became very popular in the East because of the importance of calligraphy, the complexity of handwritten language, and the large number of characters. .
Gutenberg's press, however, perfectly suited the European writing system, and its development was greatly influenced by the area from which it originated.
In the Middle Ages, Mainz was one of the most important cathedral cities in the Holy Roman Empire, in which the Church and the Archbishop of Mainz were the center of influence and political power.
Gutenberg, as an educated and enterprising nobleman, surely recognized the need of the Church to improve the method of duplicating manuscripts, which were copied by hand by monks.
It was an incredibly slow and painstaking process, which could not keep up with the growing demand for books at the time.
In the book, "Communication Revolutions: A Media History from Gutenberg to the Digital Age," Dr. Bill Kovarik, professor of communication at Redford University in the US state of Virginia, describes this capacity as "monk strength," where "one monk" represented a full day's job - of about one page - for a copyist of manuscripts.
Gutenberg's press increased the monk's power 200 times.
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At the Gutenberg Museum, I watched a demonstration of printing a page on a replica press.
First, the metal alloy is heated and poured into a matrix (a mold used for casting letters).
Once the alloy had cooled, the small metal letters were arranged into words and sentences in a pattern and coated with paint.
Finally, paper was placed on top of the pattern and it was pressed down with a heavy plate, much like a wine press.
This is no coincidence: Gutenberg's press is thought to be actually a modification of a wine press.
Ever since the Romans brought winemaking to the region, the area around Mainz has been one of the main wine producing areas, with famous grape varieties such as Riesling, Dornfelder and Sylvaner.
The continuously printed page at the Gutenberg Museum is a replica of the original style and font (Gothic texture) of Gutenberg's 42-line Bible, the first large book ever printed using movable type in the Western world.
It is the first page of the Gospel according to Saint John, in the Bible, which begins with: "In the beginning was the Word..."
Writing is often considered the first revolution in communication, while Gutenberg's printing press brought with it a revolution in mass communication.
After fifteen years of development - and the investment of huge capital - Gutenberg printed his first Bible in 1455.
"Gutenberg's Bible is an extraordinary work of art," says Dr. Kovarik, who suggests that we can load a strong religious motivation into the perfection of its execution.
"It was not unusual in those days - for example, a stonemason would go out of his way to make a perfect sculpture in a secluded corner of one of the great cathedrals, which was not intended for the people who came there to pray, but was created as an expression of personal faith."
From his original circulation of about 150 to 180 Bibles, today only 48 have been preserved in the world.
The Gutenberg Museum has two on display.
Both are slightly different, because after printing the pages would be taken to a rubricator (a specialized notebook) who would paint certain letters according to the customer's taste.
Gutenberg's Bibles became bestsellers.
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At first, the Church welcomed the new availability of printed Bibles and other religious texts.
Printing enabled the Church to spread the Christian message and collect financial resources in the form of "indulgences" - printed documents through which people were forgiven for their sins.
However, the disruptive power of the printed word soon became apparent.
With the rapid spread of printing technology - by the 1470s, every European city had a printing press, and by the 1500s, an estimated four million books had been printed and sold - came the spread of new and often contradictory ideas, such as the 95 Theses Martin Luther, in which he criticized the Church's sale of indulgences.
It is said that Luther nailed his text to the church door in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517.
Within a few years, 300.000 copies of the text were printed and distributed, leading to the Reformation and a permanent schism in the Church.
But despite the far-reaching consequences of Gutenberg's press, most information about the man remains a mystery, buried deep beneath the layers of Mainz's history.
The place where he was born on the corner of Kristofstrasse is marked by a memorial plaque, but the original house is long gone.
Today there is a modern building, which houses a pharmacy.
Another plaque in front of the nearby Church of St. Christopher marks the place where he was most likely baptized.
The church was bombed in World War II and remains in ruins as a war memorial, although the original baptismal font from Gutenberg's time remains intact.
The cemetery where Gutenberg is buried is paved and although you can find his statues all over the city, we don't know what he really looked like.
He is most often depicted with a beard, but it is unlikely that he actually wore one.
Gutenberg was a nobleman, and in his time, according to my tourist guide Johanna Hein, only pilgrims and Jews wore beards.
Moreover, the man we all know as Johann Gutenberg was actually born as Johann Gensfleisch (translated as "goose meat").
If it weren't for the 14th-century trend of people adopting the names of their houses, we would probably call his invention the Gensfleisch Press today.
But although traces of man have almost completely disappeared in this city, his influence is still visible everywhere: a poster advertising cosmetics; a woman reading a newspaper in a cafe; menu on the restaurant table.
Moreover, one current communication revolution, made possible by the Internet, digital technology and social networks, is a continuation of what started with Gutenberg.
"Every time the price of a medium drops rapidly, it allows more people to speak out and you have a greater diversity of voices," says Dr. Kovarik, explaining that this affects the redistribution of power in society and initiates social change.
Paradoxically, however, our digital revolution can also be experienced as a return to the age before printing, according to a theory called the Gutenberg parenthesis by Dr. Thomas Pettit, an associate research professor at the University of Southern Denmark.
Petit argues that there are parallels between the pre-print age and our internet age.
"The press guaranteed stability in discourse; works in book form were the authority; the news in the press was true. In the absence of the press, news lost its authenticity and, as in the Middle Ages, became synonymous with rumor.
"We are now in a post-news phase, where fake news purveyors can accuse the legitimate press of spreading fake news and get away with it," says Dr Petit.
Whatever the impact of the digital revolution of the 21st century, just like the printing revolution before it, the effects will be felt hundreds of years into the future.
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