Gutenberg and Mainz

Johannes Gutenberg's father was one of the city's patricians; he was a merchant or trader and possibly involved in the cloth trade. This father, Friele Gensfleisch zur Laden, is mentioned as a citizen of Mainz from 1372 onwards. In 1386, Friele Gensfleisch married Else Wirich, the daughter of a grocer in Mainz, in his second marriage. Johannes Gutenberg's year of birth remains unknown to this day. It must be assumed that there is much to suggest that he was born around 1400: the sources provide no more information than that he was almost certainly born between 1394 and 1404.

The youngest son of the family appears in the earliest documents under the names Henne or Henchen (i.e. Johannes) zur Laden or Henne Gensfleisch. At that time, names were not passed down from father to son and grandson; the patricians of Mainz were named after their houses, and if they owned several, they could have different names. In relation to his father, the surname "zu Gudenberg" is first used in a document from 1427 or 1428 (Johannes Gutenberg is first mentioned in a document in 1430 as "Henchin zu Gudenberg"). We can only speculate about many details in Gutenberg's biography.

We know very little about the inventor's childhood and education. Perhaps he attended one of Mainz's collegiate or monastery schools, like many children of the patriciate. We can only assume that he would not have been able to achieve his later accomplishments without a comprehensive and fundamental education in the spirit of his time.

In 1411, Friele Gensfleisch had to leave Mainz. A dispute between the patrician families and the guilds, which was sparked by the election of a new mayor, led to 117 patricians moving to properties outside the city for a period of time. Gutenberg's father probably turned to the small town of Eltville on the Rhine, where the family owned an estate inherited through his mother. It is possible that the whole family moved there temporarily to escape the political conflicts in the city, which could have become life-threatening. In January 1413, hunger riots led to another exodus from the city.

Just as little as we know about his school education, we can say anything about his university studies. Many patrician sons from Mainz went to Erfurt to study, as this was the alma mater of the Archdiocese of Mainz. There is also an entry in the register of 1419/20 stating that a Johannes de Alta villa (= Eltville) was a registered student. Two of Gutenberg's cousins had enrolled in Erfurt a year earlier. Whether this reference relates to Johannes Gutenberg remains unclear, as there is no evidence to prove it. Gutenberg's father died in the fall of 1419.

The following year, Gutenberg's name is mentioned for the first time in a document concerning inheritance disputes. There are then no records for the following years. Johannes Gutenberg temporarily moved away from Mainz again due to disputes between guilds and the patriciate, as evidenced by a document from 1430 containing a "Rachtung" (an agreement between the disputing parties). Another document from the same period, 1430, states that Gutenberg had been granted a life annuity of 13 guilders by a Katherine von Delkenheim, half of which was to be paid to his mother. This also indicates that Gutenberg was not in Mainz at that time.

It is not until 1434 that Gutenberg's whereabouts can be verified again; for the preceding years, there is no evidence that could provide any information about his activities and whereabouts. A year earlier, Gutenberg's mother Else Wirich had died and her estate had been divided among her children. Johannes Gutenberg certainly received his share in the form of annuities, as disputes over the payment of these funds played a not insignificant role in the following years.

A letter written by Gutenberg in March 1434 reveals that he was staying in Strasbourg. Gutenberg can now be traced to the cathedral city on the Ill for eleven years. Strasbourg, with 25,000 inhabitants one of the largest communities in the German Empire, was a lively and wealthy trading city that offered countless opportunities for a determined and enterprising personality to make money. There were many connections between the patricians of Mainz and Strasbourg, and there are also indications that Gutenberg had relatives in Strasbourg on his mother's side. Gutenberg's business ventures reveal that he had a remarkable ability to inspire financiers and employees with special knowledge to join a project and to launch lucrative commercial ventures.

From around 1437, Gutenberg, who lived in the Strasbourg suburb of St. Argobast, taught a wealthy citizen, Andreas Dritzehn, how to polish and grind gemstones. He clearly had knowledge in this field, which he was now able to monetize. Shortly afterwards, a project was launched for which a cooperative was founded. The display of relics in Aachen had been announced, and pilgrim mirrors were to be produced for this pilgrimage, which would mobilize thousands of pilgrims. These were small relief metal frames made of a tin alloy, which were cast in molds and to which a convex mirror was attached by means of small clamps. The purpose of these mirrors, which many pilgrims carried attached to their hats, was to capture the blessed and healing rays that were believed to emanate from the relics and take them home, where they would also have a beneficial effect on their relatives. However, the pilgrimage took place later than expected, not until 1440, so that the capital invested did not yield any returns for a long time. During this period, a new project was already underway, which was kept secret.

There has been much speculation in the literature on the history of printing about what was actually being prepared in Strasbourg since 1438. Many indications suggest that printing with serially produced "movable" letters on a printing press had already been conceived and realized. On the other hand, it must be admitted that there is no clear evidence for this. The assumption that Gutenberg invented printing with movable type in Strasbourg is contradicted by the fact that no book known to have been printed in Strasbourg before 1460 has been found, and all surviving early prints indicate Mainz as the place of printing.

Gutenberg remained in Strasbourg until 1444. Various documents attest to his stay, but shed no light on the recent joint venture. It can be assumed that the Heilsspiegel sold well in 1440, the year of the Aachen pilgrimage, and generated a profit. The last documented evidence of Gutenberg's presence in Strasbourg is from March 12, 1444, when he still paid the annual wine tax.

The termination of the cooperative agreement, the threat of war, and the associated uncertainty regarding business prospects may have prompted Gutenberg to leave the city. The sources reveal a biographical gap of more than four years during this phase of his life. It is conceivable that Gutenberg traveled around or that he stayed in another place unknown to us during these years. What is certain is that he had regained a foothold in his hometown of Mainz from 1448 onwards.

The first evidence of his presence dates from October 17, 1448, when he received a loan that his brother-in-law Arnold Gelthus had obtained for him. Whether Gutenberg had already set up a printing workshop and now needed working capital to continue his business, or whether he had only just begun to set it up, remains unclear. However, we can assume that a printing workshop was soon set up in Mainz, because just three and a half years later, the great work of printing the Bible began, which must have been preceded by long periods of preparation and testing, during which the necessary experience for the prestigious and so successfully accomplished great task could be gained by producing smaller printed matter.

It must also be assumed that Gutenberg had to prove the applicability of his new technology before he could find new investors. It was mainly donates, schoolbooks for learning Latin grammar, that initially left the printing press and were sure to sell well due to the constant high demand. The obviously determined new beginning in Mainz, the fact that Gutenberg quickly found employees with the required special knowledge and skills, and that he was able to convince Johannes Fust, a Mainz merchant and moneylender, to finance the Bible project, continue to support the unproven but obvious assumption that he organized two workshops, one for quick sales and the other for the large-scale work of lengthy Bible printing, all of this confirms that Gutenberg was not only a man who could develop forward-looking visions, but also an outstanding organizer and a shrewd entrepreneur with a keen business sense. The image of the lonely, ascetic, and exploited inventor, which the 19th century and even authors of our century clung to, is hardly tenable.

In the summer of 1449, Gutenberg received an initial loan of 800 guilders from Fust for the manufacture of printing equipment. The equipment created with this money served as collateral for the loan. The workshop was set up in the Humbrecht courtyard, which belonged to a distant relative of Gutenberg living in Frankfurt. In 1452 and 1453, Fust gave Gutenberg another 800 guilders for the "work of books." With this capital investment, the typesetting and printing of the Bible could begin.

While the Bible was being printed between 1453 and 1454, commissioned works of a completely different nature were also being printed. The so-called letters of indulgence date from 1454 and 1455. Their purpose was to raise money for the war against the Turks, who were threatening the Kingdom of Cyprus. When sold to individual believers, they were each marked with their name and date, making it possible to determine the exact time of their creation. The printing of several thousand such letters of indulgence, which brought the Church a great deal of money, proved at a very early stage in the history of printing that the invention also offered enormous commercial development opportunities – an aspect that contemporaries would not have ignored.

Towards the end of the Bible printing process, disputes arose between Gutenberg and Fust, the causes of which we know nothing about in detail. Fust demanded the return of his loaned capital with interest and compound interest and accused Gutenberg of embezzling the money. He filed a lawsuit against his business partner in the archbishop's secular court. There are no records of the first phase of the trial, but the so-called "Helmasperger Notarial Instrument," issued on November 6, 1455, a legal document drawn up by the notary Ulrich Helmasperger, provides information on many of the circumstances. The wording does not make it clear what exactly was meant by "joint work" and the "work of the books," which was the subject of the partnership between the opponents and from which Gutenberg, according to Fust's account, had withdrawn money for other purposes. The outcome of the trial was that Fust was vindicated by the court and Gutenberg was ordered to hand over the Bible printing business and probably half of the printed Bibles to Fust. Fust seized his opportunity and continued to run the printing business with Gutenberg's employee Peter Schöffer as his new partner.

After Gutenberg lost the printing workshop for the Bible to Fust and Schöffer, he continued to work as the owner of a printing workshop, albeit in a noticeably reduced form in terms of quality and quantity. The blow dealt by the lost lawsuit must have had an impact. The printed works produced in the following years were of lesser importance in terms of aesthetic and technical significance. These were small prints that could be produced quickly and easily, such as bloodletting calendars, calls for crusades, a directory of all archbishoprics, etc.

While, as already described, Gutenberg was initially very keen to keep his invention secret so that others could not dispute his profits, this attitude apparently changed after the lawsuit with Fust, which had ended in the existence of another printing workshop. Towards the end of the 1550s, he participated in the printing of a Bible that was not produced in his workshop but in Bamberg, for which he at least supplied the type. The attribution and classification of early printed works has always been difficult: none of the printed works from Gutenberg's workshop, or rather workshops, were marked with a name. This peculiarity naturally caused problems for printing research time and again. One of the issues that has not yet been definitively resolved is the authorship and technical features of the "Catholicon" printed in Mainz, which is currently the subject of Gutenberg research. The Catholicon is a Latin dictionary compiled in 1286 by Johannes Balbus, which was essentially intended to aid in the correct understanding of the Bible. It had been copied repeatedly, as it was used by educated people as a conversation lexicon, so that even in Gutenberg's time, good sales seemed certain. Since the Catholicon was a large amount of text, a relatively small font size was used in order to fill the pages economically. The print run of the Catholicon was very high by the standards of the time, with around 300 copies of 744 folio pages each being printed. The colophon of this work states that the book was printed in Mainz and that printing was completed in 1460: "... in the year of the Incarnation of the Lord 1460 in Mainz, the mother city of the glorious German nation, ...., this excellent book Catholicon was printed and completed, not with the aid of a reed pen, stylus, and quill, but with the wonderful harmony and measure of types and forms." The name of the printer is not given. To this day, this work still poses a mystery to researchers.

After the turbulent but overall extremely productive period in Mainz between 1448 and the early 1460s, political developments – this time imperial politics – brought Gutenberg considerable misfortune towards the end of his life. In 1459, Diether von Isenburg-Büdingen was elected archbishop and thus also archchancellor of the empire. In 1461, he convened a meeting of electors in Nuremberg and appointed Gregor von Heimburg, who had been excommunicated by the pope, as his advisor. Apart from this affront, it was decided to convene a council in Frankfurt. With skillful moves, the pope managed to isolate Diether von Isenburg and build up Adolf von Nassau, his defeated opponent in the 1459 election, as his rival candidate. After the emperor had also agreed, the pope pronounced the deposition of Diether and the appointment of Adolf von Nassau as Archbishop of Mainz. The citizens of Mainz declared their support for the Isenburg, especially since he had promised them that he would abolish the privileges of the clergy in connection with the wine trade. The Fust-Schöffer printing office now published a series of printed leaflets, some of which took a stand for Diether and some for Adolf – thus, the appropriation of the art of printing for domestic politics began early on, and a new weapon of conflict had entered the scene.

On June 30, 1462, Adolf of Nassau's allies were defeated by Frederick of the Palatinate. On the night of October 28, 1462, Nassau and his allies attacked the city of Mainz with about 500 armed soldiers who invaded the city; several thousand men on foot and on horseback besieged the city. When the battle ended, four hundred citizens of Mainz had fallen in combat. Isenburg's reinforcements arrived too late, and Adolf of Nassau had Mainz under his control. The following day, all citizens of the city were summoned. Eight hundred appeared, were surrounded, and forcibly expelled from the city. The expellees lost all their possessions, and their farms were expropriated in favor of the supporters of the new archbishop. At Shrove Tuesday 1463, the expellees were ordered back to Mainz. Fifteen were thrown into prison, about 300 were allowed to remain in the city, but 400 citizens had to leave the city again and swear an oath to avoid it permanently.

Among those who were expelled from the city of Mainz on October 30, 1462, were Gutenberg and his employees. Most of his typesetters and printers moved to other cities and countries, where they were able to use and pass on their knowledge. For Gutenberg, who by the standards of the time must have been considered an old man, Eltville offered a place of refuge. In Eltville, he had relatives in the form of his niece's husband and his long-standing friends Gretchen Schwalbach and Heinrich Bechtermünze. Thus Gutenberg found himself living in exile once again, albeit involuntarily.

A new printing shop was established in Eltville, the establishment of which was certainly directed and supervised by Gutenberg. It belonged to the brothers Heinrich and Nicolaus Bechtermünze and was located in the Bechtermünzer Hof. Between 1465 and 1467, a Latin work, the "Vocabularius ex quo," was printed here. In

January 1465, Gutenberg was honored for his services in a letter from Archbishop Adolf von Nassau and appointed "courtier" to Adolf von Nassau. The honor, one of many measures to make amends for past injustices, was accompanied by material benefits: he was provided with social security, received a court dress annually, as well as 2180 liters of grain and 2000 liters of wine, tax-free. The goods in kind were delivered to Gutenberg in Mainz, from which it can be concluded that he either already lived there again or divided his time between Eltville and Mainz.

The public honoring of the inventor proves that his work had by no means gone unnoticed by his contemporaries, but that its significance and scope had already been recognized to a certain extent. There was no hostility towards the new technology; instead, it was immediately put to various uses, not only in the spirit of Christian teaching, but also as a political weapon and, in the case of single-sheet printing, as an unlimited mass product in the form of forms for commercial and administrative purposes.

His appointment as court official is the last document that provides information about the inventor's life. We can conclude that he spent his last years well provided for, probably mainly in Mainz. A chronicle contains the note: "Hansz Gutenberger lives in the Algesheimer Bursch," referring to the Algesheimer Hof next to St. Christopher's Church in Mainz. Gutenberg died three years after his appointment as court official. An entry in a book printed after Gutenberg's death tells us that Gutenberg died on St. Blasius Day, February 3, 1468. He was buried in the Church of St. Francis. Since the church and cemetery were later destroyed, Gutenberg's grave has also been lost.

The centenary of the invention of printing has been celebrated since 1540. However, Gutenberg, the man to whom we owe this invention, has only been particularly honored since the French Revolution. In 1827, the first Gutenberg monument was erected in Mainz; in 1837, a larger monument, created by Bertel Thorvaldsen with international participation, was inaugurated. In memory of the city's great son, the Gutenberg Museum was founded in Mainz in 1900, as was the International Gutenberg Society. In this way, the memory of Johannes Gutenberg was honored in his hometown.