Study title

The Study’s Subject: This publication was part of a DFG-funded research-project on industrialization in the economic area of Berlin / Brandenburg. In this context the researcher analyzed the relationship between industrialization and literature as well as the reception of the industrialization process itself, measured by its affect on contemporary German book production of the 19th Century. The aim is to describe the economic, social and cultural conditions and changes in book production. Rarisch analyzed the production of books and publishing, among other things, using statistical series in order to find a quantitative parameter describing the literary development processes. On the basis of the analysis of the statistical series the researcher made statements about the range of producers, writers and publishers, and thus also on the distribution of education-opportunities made possible by the book. In addition the statistics of book-production and the growth of the book-trade-industry fulfill the function of an economic and a cultural indicator in the framework of social and economic historical education research. Until now quantitative information on book production since the 1848 revolution are difficult of access. It is the merit of the researcher to have compiled a differentiated datafile on the basis of this statistical material. Problems of Sources: In terms of methodology, a statistical analysis of book production faces various difficulties resulting of the problem how to define a book or literature. Under literature are basically three forms detected: the book, the reading and literature in the strict sense. As a statistical unit for the book only the published title is accessible and not the number of copies published or the number of readers of a book-title. If no data on book-circulation and on the number of readers per book are available, a statistical analysis on book-production has only a preliminary character. As another problem the...