Hof zum Gutenberg
The Hof zum Gutenberg was most likely the birthplace of Johannes Gutenberg and was located on Schusterstraße in the old town of Mainz .
history
Johannes Gutenberg was born in Mainz around 1400 AD in Hof zum Gutenberg and was baptized on June 24th (St. John's Day) in the parish church of St. Christoph.
He changed his birth name Johannes Gensfleisch according to the fashion of the time, the 20s of the 15th century, and took the name of the family seat of his parents. This is how he got the name we know him by today.
In 1455 Gutenberg, who had meanwhile operated a printing company in Humbrechthof , returned to his father's house after losing a legal dispute, where he continued his printing business.
In the course of a dispute between the two competing Archbishops of Mainz, the candidate Adolf II of Nassau, favored by the Pope, conquered the city on the night of October 29, 1462 in a street fight, which was then looted and partly destroyed. Numerous families were banned from Mainz for a long time and their farms were given to the partisans of Adolf von Nassau. The Hof zum Gutenberg also changed hands during these years, which suggests that Johannes Gutenberg was also one of the losers and victims of the Mainz collegiate feud .
When the old Mainz University was founded on October 1, 1477, the court of Gutenberg was assigned to the law faculty and the other three faculties (artists, doctors and theologians) to the Algesheimer Hof , Gutenberg's death house.
The small collection of books that had been donated to the university by professors and other patrons was also placed in one of the two buildings. The founding rector Jakob Welder from Siegen , for example, donated 23 books from his private collection. This collection became the foundation of the university library.
The Mainz university professor Ivo Wittig had a memorial stone erected in the courtyard of the Gutenberg in 1504 , bearing the Latin inscription: “Johannes Gutenberg from Mainz, who was the first of all to invent the art of printing and who has made a name for himself around the world with this art 1504 Ivo Wittig used this stone as a memorial ”.
In 1827 Gutenberg's first figurative monument, the one created by the sculptor Joseph Scholl , was erected in the courtyard of Gutenberg . It is now in the administration building of the Gutenberg Museum .
location
The Hof zum Gutenberg was in the old town of Mainz, on Schusterstrasse. It forms the starting point of a short axis that runs over the Church of St. Christoph , Gutenberg's baptismal church, to Gutenberg's death house, the Algesheimer Hof .
literature
- Karl Anton Schaab : The story of the invention of the art of printing by Johann Gensfleisch called Gutenberg zu Mainz . Mainz 1830; second volume, p. 90 ff.
Individual evidence
- ^ Bernhard Fabian: Handbook of the historical book holdings in Germany, Austria and Europe . Mainz City Library, inventory history
Coordinates: 50 ° 0 ′ 5.8 ″ N , 8 ° 16 ′ 17.4 ″ E