The Thirty Years' War was a time of great turbulence in the German book market. Book production had reached a peak by the end of the sixteenth century, and large libraries were regarded as symbols of cultural prestige by the confessionally motivated parties involved in warfare. Whole collections were taken as booty on all sides and individual books were used as tokens of appeasement. It was also a time which afforded great opportunities for discriminating book collectors as impoverished book and manuscript owners sold their collections in order to survive. Books also could assume a totemic significance in justifying the confessional stance of the warring parties as the indestructibility of Johann Arndt's Paradiesgartlein demonstrates.