Johannes Gutenberg

German inventor

• Born: 1394-1399
• Birthplace: Mainz (now in Germany)
• Died: Probably February 3, 1468
• Place of death: Mainz (now in Germany)

Gutenberg invented printing with movable metal type and initiated the printing of the forty-two-line Bible, setting in motion a cultural revolution.

Early Life

Johann Gutenberg (YOH-hahn GEW-tehn-buhrg) was born in Mainz, an important German city on the Rhine River that was the seat of an archbishop. In the absence of a documented record, his birth date is placed between 1394 and 1399. His family, known as Gensfleisch zur Laden, was of the patrician class, but they were generally called Gutenberg, after their place of residence. Most members of his father’s family were skilled metal craftsmen for the archbishop’s mint in Mainz. Although there is no firm evidence about Gutenberg’s education, he presumably continued his family’s association with metalworking by being trained in this craft.

During his youth, Mainz was experiencing political turmoil because of conflicts between patrician and working classes. This civil strife led Gutenberg’s father, Friele zum Gutenberg, to go into exile from the city in 1411. After similar disruptions in 1428, during which the Mainz guilds revoked civic privileges from the patricians, Gutenberg, who was probably around thirty years old at that time, settled in Strasbourg, a German city on the Rhine.

Life’s Work

Gutenberg’s activities during his mature life are of primary interest because of the evidence they contribute to knowledge about the invention of printing with movable type in Western Europe. His life and work can be divided into two chronological periods. During the first period, between 1428 and 1448, when he was living in Strasbourg, he probably began developing the printing process. In the last twenty years of his life, from 1448 to 1468, he returned to Mainz, where he brought his invention of printing with movable metal type to fruition in a Bible (now known as the Gutenberg Bible , the first complete book printed with movable metal type in Europe) and other printed books.

Information about Gutenberg’s life in Strasbourg comes mainly from court records of lawsuits in which he was involved. Except for one case in 1436, when he was sued for breach of promise regarding marriage, these records are important because they show that he both practiced metalworking and was developing printing technology. One lawsuit in 1439 provides useful insights into Gutenberg’s involvement with printing. The suit arose because, in 1438, Gutenberg had formed a partnership with several Strasbourg citizens to produce mirrors to be sold to pilgrims on a forthcoming pilgrimage to Aachen. On learning that the pilgrimage was to take place a year later than they had anticipated, the partners entered into a new contract with Gutenberg so that he would instruct them in other arts that he knew. One clause stipulated that if a partner died, his heirs would receive monetary compensation instead of being taken into the partnership. Soon after the contract was negotiated, one of the partners, Andreas Dritzehn, died, and his two brothers sued to become partners. The court determined that the contract was valid, and Gutenberg won the case.

Testimony of witnesses for this lawsuit has been interpreted as showing that Gutenberg was experimenting with printing using movable metal type. A goldsmith testified that Gutenberg paid him for “materials pertaining to printing.” One witness mentioned purchases of metal, a press, and Formen (which became the German word for type). Another described how Gutenberg instructed him to dismantle and place on the press an object consisting of four pieces held together with screws that had been reconstructed as a typecasting mold. These combined references indicate that Gutenberg was working out the printing process, but no tangible evidence of his work with printing from this Strasbourg period has survived.

By 1448, Gutenberg had returned to Mainz. One document a record of an oath made by Johann Fust on November 6, 1455, during a lawsuit that Fust, a Mainz businessman, had brought against Gutenberg helps to reconstruct Gutenberg’s work in Mainz from around 1448 to 1455. The document, known as the Helmasperger Instrument from the name of the notary who drew it up, also has been used to connect this activity with the production of the Gutenberg Bible.

Fust was suing to recover loans that he had made to Gutenberg. The first loan of eight hundred guilders at 6 percent interest was made in 1450 and the second, also for eight hundred guilders with interest, in 1452. The loans were intended to provide for expenses in making equipment, paying workers’ wages, and purchasing paper, parchment, and ink. In the second loan, Fust and Gutenberg became partners for “the work of the books.” Testimony also establishes that Gutenberg had several workers and assistants. Peter Schoeffer, who had earlier been a scribe, was a witness for Fust, and soon thereafter Fust and Schoeffer established a flourishing printing business in Mainz. Gutenberg’s two witnesses, Berthold Ruppel and Heinrich Kefer, who were his servants or workmen, also later became independent printers. Fust won the suit, since the court decided that Gutenberg should repay the original loan with interest. This document indicates that Gutenberg, using capital loaned to him by Fust, was operating a workshop with assistants for the purpose of producing books, probably by printing.

Bibliographical study of the Gutenberg Bible adds evidence to support the theory that Gutenberg’s primary “work of the books” was printing the Gutenberg Bible. Notation in a copy of this Bible at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris indicates that Heinrich Cremer, vicar of the Church of Saint Stephen at Mainz, completed its rubrication and binding in two volumes in August, 1456. Study of paper, ink, and typography of the Gutenberg Bible suggests that it was in production between 1452 and 1454. This analysis also demonstrates that several presses were printing this Bible simultaneously. Thus, evidence from examination of surviving copies of the Gutenberg Bible correlates with information from Fust’s lawsuit to show that the Bible was at or near completion at the time of the 1455 suit. Also, the substantial amount of money loaned and the types of expenses for equipment, supplies, and wages for several workmen are consistent with the production scale using several presses. Scholars have thus concluded that soon after Gutenberg returned to Mainz, he was responsible for producing the first complete printed book in Western Europe, the Gutenberg Bible.

A major question about Gutenberg’s later life concerns his continued production of printed books after Fust’s lawsuit in 1455. Again, documented evidence about this period is meager. He seems to have received some patronage and support from Konrad Humery, a Mainz canonist, who, after Gutenberg’s death in early February, 1468, attested that he owned Gutenberg’s printing equipment and materials. In addition, in 1465, the archbishop of Mainz had accorded Gutenberg a civil pension whose privileges included an annual allowance for a suit of clothes, allotments of corn and wine, and exemption from taxes.

Determining Gutenberg’s production of printed matter besides the Gutenberg Bible therefore depends on interpretation of these documents, including the financial ramifications of the 1455 lawsuit, and especially bibliographical analysis of early examples of printing. One group of these printed materials is called the B36 group. The name comes from a Gothic type similar to but somewhat larger and less refined than the type used for the forty-two-line Gutenberg Bible. Works associated with this group include some broadsides, traditional grammar texts by the Roman author Donatus, and a thirty-six-line Bible printed in Bamberg, dated 1458-1459. Another group comes from the press that printed the Catholicon , a Latin dictionary put together in a smaller Gothic type by Johannes Balbus in Mainz in 1460. At least two other books and broadsides are connected with this press.

According to some sources, Gutenberg had to give up his printing materials to satisfy repayment to Fust. This financial disaster, combined with the somewhat inferior quality of printing using variants of the thirty-six-line Bible type, suggests that few, if any, other surviving early printed works can be attributed to Gutenberg. Another interpretation holds that the settlement with Fust did not deplete Gutenberg’s financial or material resources to which Humery’s support added. The comparative irregularities in the B36 type show that it was being developed earlier than the perfected Gutenberg Bible font, and this evidence suggests that Gutenberg was printing other works concurrently with and subsequently to the Gutenberg Bible using this more experimental type. Technical innovations in the type and setting of the Catholicon, along with its colophon extolling the new printing process, make Gutenberg, the inventor of printing, the person most likely to have executed the printing from the Catholicon press. Thus, it makes sense that Gutenberg probably printed various items comprising the B36 and Catholicon press groups throughout his career based in Mainz.

Significance

While further research in many areas will continue to add greater precision to identifying the corpus of Johann Gutenberg’s printed works, his most significant achievement is the invention of printing with movable metal type. From the 1430’s to the completion of the Gutenberg Bible around 1455, Gutenberg utilized his metalworking skills to develop a process of casting individual letters that could be arranged repeatedly into any alphabetic text. When combined with paper, his new oil-based typographic ink, and a printing press, Gutenberg’s process succeeded in merging several distinct technologies, making possible the production of multiple identical copies of a text. Although the changes that printing brought developed gradually during the succeeding centuries, the use of printing has had major effects on almost every aspect of human endeavor including communications and literacy, economic patterns of investment, production, and marketing, and a wide range of intellectual ideas.

The Gutenberg Bible is an outstanding symbol of his invention. The copies that are still extant (forty-eight out of an original printing of about 180) demonstrate the high level of technical and aesthetic perfection that this 1,282-page book attained. The regularity of the lines, the justification of the margins, the quality of the ink, and especially the beautiful design of the type show how Gutenberg raised the printing process beyond a technological invention to an art.

Bibliography

Davies, Martin. The Gutenberg Bible. London: British Library, 1996. Examines both how the Bible was printed and the spread and impact of printing across Europe. Bibliography.

Febvre, Lucien, and Henri-Jean Martin. Translated by David Gerard. 1976. Reprint. The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450-1800. London: Verso, 1997. Discusses Gutenberg’s role in the invention of printing in the context of the transition from manuscripts to printed books. Also examines the impact of printing on varied aspects of book production and the book trade in early modern Europe. Maps, bibliography, index.

Fuhrmann, Otto W. Gutenberg and the Strasbourg Documents of 1439: An Interpretation. New York: Press of the Woolly Whale, 1940. Gives a transcription of the original German text of the lawsuit against Gutenberg in Strasbourg in 1439 that is important for reconstructing Gutenberg’s early printing efforts. The book provides translations in modern English, German, and French, as well as a discussion of the meaning of the Strasbourg suit.

Goff, Frederick R. The Permanence of Johann Gutenberg. Austin: University of Texas at Austin, Humanities Research Center, 1969. Includes an essay on Gutenberg’s invention and evidence for what he printed. Also discusses the significance of Gutenberg’s invention.

Ing, Janet. “Searching for Gutenberg in the 1980’.” Fine Print 12 (1986): 212-215. This article summarizes the technical bibliographical studies concerning Gutenberg’s printing during the twentieth century. Its focus is on scientific methods of analysis of paper and ink and typographical studies done in the 1970’s and 1980’. References are included.

Kapr, Albert. Johann Gutenberg: The Man and His Invention. Translated by Douglas Martin. Brookfield, Vt.: Scolar Press, 1996. Covers Gutenberg’s origins, early life, apprenticeship, and travel; the technical problems of inventing the printing press; his business; the Mainz archbishops’ war; and more. Illustrations, bibliography, index.

Lehmann-Haupt, Helmut. Gutenberg and the Master of the Playing Cards. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966. Suggests that Gutenberg may have been involved with developing techniques for printed reproduction of designs for book decoration and illustration necessary to produce, in printed form, the effect of finely illuminated manuscripts.

McMurtrie, Douglas C. The Gutenberg Documents. New York: Oxford University Press, 1941. Contains all the known documents associated with Gutenberg in English translation. Includes notes.

Man, John. Gutenberg: How One Man Remade the World with Words. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002. Explores the vast effects of Gutenberg’s invention on science, literature, the understanding of the past, Christian (dis)unity, politics and the rise of nation-states, and more. Also examines Gutenberg as a determined and ambitious risk taker in the often repressive context of his times. Bibliography, index.

Needham, Paul. “Johann Gutenberg and the Catholicon Press.” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 76 (1982): 395-456. Discusses bibliographical problems relating particularly to evidence from paper and typography in works from the Catholicon press. Needham’s conclusions summarize arguments for Gutenberg’s role in printing material in the Catholicon press group.

Painter, George D. “Gutenberg and the B36 Group: A Re-Consideration.” In Essays in Honor of Victor Scholderer, edited by Dennis F. Rhodes. Mainz: Karl Pressler, 1970. This article discusses the examples of printing in the B36 group and argues that Gutenberg printed these pieces.

Scholderer, Victor. Johann Gutenberg: The Inventor of Printing. 1963. Rev. ed. London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1970. The most complete biography of Gutenberg in English. It covers the various types of evidence for documenting Gutenberg’s life and activity as the inventor of printing. Contains bibliographical references and good illustrations.