The Frankfurt Book Fair was one of the more significant events in the intellectual life of sixteenth-century Europe. Authors had to finish books and get them to the printer so they could be printed and bound and shipped for sale to Frankfurt. If memory serves, Luther got his copy of Erasmus' Novum Instrumentum Omne (New Complete Tool- sort of the International Critical Edition of the NT at the time with Latin on one side and Greek on the other) at the Frankfurt Book Fair in the Spring of 1516. Calvin had to halt his reply to Pighius on predestination (which he never finished) because he had to meet the deadline posed by the FBF.

Well, the FBF still exists. One of the writers at the IVP blog talks about it.

The German title is fun in English. I like the idea of a "buchmesse"