GUTENBERG, JOANNES. – Prototypographer, inventor of printing with movable type, born in Mainz between 1395 and 1399; the original surname “Gensfleisch” was supplanted by “Gutenberg,” derived from a paternal noble property. Very little is known about his youth. Archival documents prove that in 1434 he was residing in Strasbourg, where he is believed to have taken refuge as early as 1424 for political reasons. During the period 1436–39, G. was associated with three citizens of Strasbourg in putting several industrial inventions into operation; one of these concerned a “new art,” the secret of which he kept. Tradition holds that the first experiments were carried out in the monastery of S. Arbogaste near Strasbourg, and later in the house of Andrea Dritzehn, one of the partners, who died during this period. This was followed, in
1439, by a lawsuit between the Dritzehn heirs and G., in which the latter received a favorable judgment; the court records reveal that G. had set up a press and that forms, pages, and tools for printing books were found in Dritzehn’s house. G.’s residence in Strasbourg is documented until 1444, the year in which he is presumed to have returned to Mainz, where the art of printing in fact began.
According to G. Zedler, G.’s first printed work would have been a fragment of the Ars grammatica of Aelius Donatus, a very widely disseminated instructional booklet in the Middle Ages, to which a printing date of 1444 would be assigned. According to tradition, however, G.’s oldest printed product would have been a fragment of a German poem on the Last Judgment, called Weltgericht, or also Sibyllen Buch, discovered in Mainz in 1892 and assigned a printing date of 1445. Slightly later would be other fragments of the Donatus, datable to between 1446 and 1447, and a supposed Astronomical Calendar calculated for the year 1448 and therefore believed to have been printed toward the end of 1447. Recent studies, conducted on the basis of several fragments of Mainz printing proofs, instead tend to classify the supposed Calendar as a Table of the Planets and consequently to date it later, to 1458 or 1459.
Around 1450 G. entered into partnership with Giovanni Fust, a wealthy Mainz resident, who made a substantial financial contribution to the publishing ventures. The period 1450–55 is to be assigned several small printed works, including the so-called Letters of Indulgence, containing a papal bull of Niccolò V, known in eleven different editions and representing the oldest dated typographical products.
Between the end of 1453 and the beginning of 1456, the great Bible in two volumes appeared, known as the 42-line Bible or also the “Mazarine,” traditionally regarded, for the most part, as the work of G. During its printing, a third partner, Pietro Schöffer, a skilled technician, became involved; he induced Fust to remove G. from the workshop and from their publishing ventures. This is confirmed by a lawsuit brought against G. for breach of contract, in which he was defeated, as attested by a notarial instrument of 6 November 1455, known as the “Helmaspergerische Notariatsinstrument.”
According to tradition, G., with a modest supply of types that appear to be related to those of the aforementioned printed works, continued his typographical activity alone, bringing out small booklets, several calendars, and another bull of Callistus III. Recent studies, however, tend to attribute these works to unknown Mainz printers, perhaps employees of G. and Fust, working competitively and clandestinely. The attribution to G. of another Bible, known as the 36-line Bible and datable to 1457–58, is likewise disputed; the printer Alberto Pfister of Bamberg seems to have played a considerable part in II. A final book, the Catholicon of Giovanni Balbi, printed in Mainz in 1460, has more reliable claims to be assigned to G.
After this year there is no further information about G.’s typographical activity; in 1465 he appears as a court official of the archbishop and prince-elector Adolfo II of Nassau.
G. died in Mainz, probably on 3 February 1468, according to a handwritten note discovered in an incunabulum by F. W. Roth in 1915. His name appears in none of the works, booklets, or fragments attributed to him, but it is certain that the evidence available, despite the scant and fragmentary documentation and a unanimous and enduring tradition, designates him as the one true prototypographer in the world.