20 June 2023 press release

This year's Gutenberg Prize of the City of Leipzig goes to the internationally renowned Leipzig publishing company Spector Books. The German Museum of Books and Writing is marking the occasion by dedicating a showcase exhibition to the prize winner; titled "Handapparat ". It is curated by the publishing team led by founders Anne König, Markus Dreßen and Jan Wenzel.

Jean-Luc Godard once said, "If you want to make a film, there has to be two of you". The same applies to books. Spector Books, established in 2008, has tested this principle of more-than-one at all levels of its work throughout more than twenty years of practice. For this company, publishing books means bringing together everyone involved in book production for a lively exchange of ideas while coordinating the interaction between authors, artists, designers, printers and bookbinders.

The diverse perspectives and conflicts that arise from this process are inscribed in each book: in the graphic decisions or the materiality of the book block, the structure of the double page or the constellations of images and text. The manifestations of a dialogical work process are evident in every fibre of every Spector book. Continued questioning of the medium is equally important, as is dialogue with what has already been produced. The place for this is the library: the society of books. For Spector Books, publishing is a paradoxical movement in time: each new book is created against the backdrop of the books that have already been produced; it is a work on the present and a message sent into an unknown future.

The showcase exhibition was conceived as a platform for this dialogue; it shows the many and varied ways in which the publisher's own works establish points of contact with other books and book producers, and how they benefit from this.

These points of contact also include works by previous winners of the Gutenberg Prize, such as Lothar Reher (1988), Elisabeth Shaw (1984), Solomon B. Telingater (1963) and Hans Peter Willberg (1992). Along with these examples, the exhibition features some 70 Spector books for visitors to browse and read.

The exhibition will be accompanied by numerous talks with the Spector Books publishers and their authors; these will be held during the summer and autumn. The first of these events will be a conversation with author and film producer Alexander Kluge hosted by Anne König and Jan Wenzel (Spector Books); this will take place at 19:00 on 21 June 2023 and focus on the topic "Unerfülltes Programm” (Unfulfilled Manifesto).

Spector Books: Handapparat
Showcase exhibition at the German Museum of Books and Writing at the German National Library
21 June 2023 to 28 January 2024
Tuesday to Sunday 10:00 to 18:00, Thursday 10:00 to 20:00
Public holidays (except Mondays)10:00 to 18:00
Admission free.

Information: https://www.dnb.de/EN/Kulturell/Gutenbergpreis/gutenbergpreis_node.html

Accompanying event

DBSM:Meet #7 "Unerfülltes Programm“ (Unfulfilled manifesto). Alexander Kluge in conversation with Spector Books
Wednesday, 21. June 2023, 19:00
Sociologist Oskar Negt and author and film director Alexander Kluge published the book "Geschichte und Eigensinn” (History and Obstinacy) in 1981. More than 1200 pages in length, this volume was a brand new phenomenon in its day: theory that deliberately worked with the medium of the book, in which designer Franz Greno played a significant part. Anne König and Jan Wenzel from Spector Books talk to Alexander Kluge about how "Geschichte und Eigensinn” (History and Obstinacy) came into being and present one of the publishing company's new releases: "Kant Kommentare” (Kant Commentaries), the most recent collaboration between Alexander Kluge and Oskar Negt.

Background

Since 1959, the City of Leipzig’s Gutenberg Prize, bestowed in memory of Johannes Gutenberg, has been used to honour people and institutions that – according to the Prize’s statutes – “have shown merit through their outstanding, exemplary efforts to promote book art”. It has been awarded every other year since 1993, alternating annually with the City of Mainz’s prize of the same name. The German Museum of Books and Writing is a member of the jury. The Prize is awarded for special artistic, technical or academic achievements in the areas of typography, book illustration, book art publishing, book creation and services to the dissemination of the free word.

The book has shaped our culture and civilisation like no other medium. For centuries our knowledge about the world and its peoples has been stored in books. The task of the German National Library’s German Museum of Books and Writing is to collect, exhibit and process evidence of book and media history. Founded in 1884 in Leipzig as the Deutsches Buchgewerbemuseum (German Book Trade Museum), it is the oldest museum in the world in the field of book culture, and also one of the most important with regard to the scope and quality of its holdings. The Museum also pays close attention to issues relating to the future of media in our networked societies.

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