Ulrich Zell (died c.1507) was an early printer in Cologne, Germany.
Ulrich Zell (died c.1507) was an early printer in Cologne, Germany.
Zell was born at Hanau am Main, date unknown. He learned the art of printing before 1462 in the printing establishment of Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer, and seems, shortly after the catastrophe of 1462, to have gone to Cologne, whose university gave promise of a market for printed works. Zell was printing at Cologne apparently as early as 1463, although his first dated book is 1466. His work as printer and publisher can be traced up to the year 1502; altogether about 120 of his publications are known. Of these, however, only nine bear his name, but in all probability he printed and published many more. In outline and cut his six kinds of type are strikingly similar to the "Durandus" and "Clements" types of Fust and Schoffer; it would even seem that a number of the matrices of the "Clements" type had been used. Most of the books printed by Zell were text-books in quarto form for the university. Among the fine productions of his printing shop is an undated edition of the Latin Bible in two volumes. At first he called himself clericus (of the lower orders), but as early as 1471 he married and became a citizen and householder of Cologne. In 1473 he bought the important manorial estate of "Lyskirchen", to which he transferred the main part of his business. In the colophons of his books the place of business is called "apud Lyskirchen". The purchase, sometime later, of various houses, lands, and properties yielding revenues, show that Zell had become a prosperous man. It is also proof of his importance that for a long time he filled the office of Kirchenmeister (church-master) of "S. Maria an Lyskirchen". Of much importance in the history of the discovery of printing is Zell's statement, preserved in the Chronicle of Cologne of 1499, that the year 1450 was the date of the beginning of printing, that the country-squire Johann Gutenberg was the inventor of it, and that the first book printed was the Latin Bible, the Vulgate.
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This article is a list of the literary events and publications in the 15th century.
Johann Fust or Faust was an early German printer.
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The Mainz Psalter was the second major book printed with movable type in the West; the first was the Gutenberg Bible. It is a psalter commissioned by the Mainz archbishop in 1457. The Psalter introduced several innovations: it was the first book to feature a printed date of publication, a printed colophon, two sizes of type, printed decorative initials, and the first to be printed in three colours. The colophon also contains the first example of a printer's mark. It was the first important publication issued by Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer following their split from Johannes Gutenberg.
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Johannes (Hans) Grüninger (1455–1533) was a German printer whose career spanned from 1482 to 1533 and produced up to 500 publications. Grüninger was one of the single most prolific printers of Strasbourg, printing up to 80 books a year. While a great deal of his publications were Catholic, he managed to print a great variety of works ranging from humanist to scientific texts. His work was fairly equally representative of both Latin and the vernacular; about 39% of his works were printed in Latin and the remaining 61% in German.
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Hayyim ben David Schwartz was an early Hebrew printer, typographer, and editor, known as the first Jewish printer of Hebrew books in Germany.
Peter Schöffer the Younger was a German printer, the son of Peter Schöffer, a former apprentice of Johannes Gutenberg, and a grandson of Gutenberg's financier Johann Fust. He first worked in Mainz, where he set up his first workshop. He was an expert type caster, and his specialty was printing music. Schöffer moved to Worms in 1518, where he printed among other works the Tyndale Bible, which was the first mass-produced English edition of the New Testament, and the first complete German Protestant translation of the Bible. Later in life, he also worked in Straßburg, Venice and Basel.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Ulrich Zell". Catholic Encyclopedia . New York: Robert Appleton Company.
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