Ducal printing works (Barth)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Ducal Printing House ( Latin officina ducalis ), also Princely Printing House ( Latin officina principis ), existed from 1582 to 1604. It occupies an important position in the history of book printing in Pomerania . Your most important work is the Barther Bible .

history

Duke Bogislaw XIII. von Pommern had an off- press set up in Barth in 1582 . Although a print sheet is still available from the beginning of the year, the earliest printing can only be verified for 1584 under Andreas Seitner (also Seytner or Seydner) with a writing by the general superintendent Jacob Runge . One of the sponsors of the facility was Martin Marstaller , educator of the Duke's son Philip II , who had his writings printed there. In Barth, the print shop was first on the west side of Hundestrasse, then on Badstubenstrasse. Eventually she was housed in a house on the southern half of the castle courtyard.

In 1584, under Andreas Seitner, preparations began for the printing of a Low German Bible edition for Pomerania . After Seitner left, Hans Witte took over the printing company in 1586, under which the Bible was completed in 1586. The printing house reached its greatest productivity between 1586 and 1594. After that, production declined significantly. In addition to speeches, sermons, tracts and court orders, a genealogy and family tree of the Pomeranian griffins were published. In addition to works by Luther , writings by Philipp Melanchthon and Erasmus von Rotterdam , Balthasar Rüssow's Chronica of the Lyfflandt Province , works by Nathan Chyträus , Lorenz Rhodomann , Konrad Schluesselburg and Jakob Seidel , as well as by Aristotle were published .

Whereabouts of the print shop

After the ducal court was relocated to Stettin in 1604, the history of the printing company and the whereabouts of its type material remains in the dark. The latter was taken to Stettin and, since there was already a print shop there, it was brought to the Oderburg . There was no renewed start-up of operations, instead the best letters were awarded and thus ended up at the Ferbersche print shop and the Greifswald university print shop. Deviating from this, Gottlieb Mohnike states that the Princely Offizin on the Oderburg was operated by the Princely officials Samuel Eyrer and Johann Dübern and that it was ultimately acquired by Nicolaus Bartholdi. Johannes Micraelius is said to have persuaded Bartholdi to sell the printing works to the Swedish King Gustav II Adolf in 1632 . The king donated them to the newly founded Academia Gustaviana Dorpatensis .

Printing work

The print shop's products, regardless of whether they were 1600 pages or only 4 pages long, were of high quality throughout. The typeface was clean, the lines and edges of the print mirror were kept exactly, the title pages and text illustrations decorated with high-quality engravings, some with lavishly designed frames. Especially small occasional fonts, on the occasion of birthdays, marriages, deaths, doctorates ... appeared elsewhere often produced "on the side" - with what the printer had in his type case at hand.

Not so in Barth - and for the following reason: The printing house here was not given to a private person who had to pay a sum of money for the printing privilege and then collect it again as a business, but remained as a princely printing house in the possession of Duke Bogislaw XIII Presumably his prince tutor, the Renaissance scholar Martin Marstaller, gave direct supervision. The printing company was not forced to make money, but was supposed to deliver good prints.

museum

Since 2001 there has been a Bible Center in the former St. Jürgen Hospital , outside the historic old town of Barth . A complete exhibition area deals with Bible printing and the princely printing house in Barth and also shows a copy of the Barther Bible . In 2009 the exhibition was expanded to include a copy of the Lübeck Bible , which is regarded as a text template for the Bible print in the Barther printing house.

literature

  • Gottlieb Mohnike : The history of book printing in Pomerania. Bülow, Stettin 1840, pp. 65-71 ( Google Books ).
  • Christoph Reske: The book printers of the 16th and 17th centuries in the German-speaking area. Based on the work of the same name by Josef Benzing. (= Contributions to books and libraries. Volume 51), Otto Harrassowitz, 2007, ISBN 978-3-447-05450-8 , pp. 59–60.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jürgen Hamel: Bibliography of the prints of the Princely Printing House Barth 1582-1604. In: Baltic Studies . NF 100 (2014), pp. 83-127
  2. ↑ Jürgen Hamel: A new archive find on the afterlife of the "Princely Printing House" in Barth. In: LandeBarth. Volume 6. Rostock 2014, pp. 84–87.
  3. ↑ Barth Bible Museum. Accessed July 24, 2020.