Johann Weyssenburger

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Johann Weyssenburger (* around 1465 in Nuremberg , † around 1535 in Passau ) was a German Roman Catholic priest and printer . In Landshut he also had a clerical office as chaplain in St. Martin , "Johann Weyssenburger, altarist in Sant Martin parish hie zu Landshut".

Life

Weyssenburger was mentioned for the first time as a printer in Nuremberg in 1503. He initially worked there with a Nikolaus Fleyschmann , who was probably also a priest.

After separating from the latter, Weyssenburg continued the book printing trade on his own, initially in Nuremberg until 1513, after which he then relocated his printing shop to Landshut in Lower Bavaria. Most likely this took place in the year mentioned, although the earliest known product of his activity there dates from April 1514.

It is possible that he had been called to Landshut from some source, where there was no longer a printing company at the time; his predecessor was Lukas Zaussenmair. Products from Weyssenburger's workshop are known from Landshut until 1531; then his name disappeared.

The number of his prints was well over 100, of which the greater part falls on the production site in Landshut. Many of these print products were richly decorated with woodcuts , a fact that also secures a place for this printer in the history of book illustration .

As for the content of the prints, there is not a complete lack of profane works among them. Weyssenburg preferred to use his press for the service of the Roman Catholic Church, printing documents that the clergy needed: declarations of the mass canon, collections of sermons, confessional books, then again church documents for lay people: death books (including three editions of the Ars moriendi ) , Sanctuary books , lives of saints - this and the like arose primarily from his craft business.

When the Reformation came, the Weyssenburgers printing house was one of the few in southern Germany that was available to the opponents of the new movement. He published works by Johannes Eck , Johann Fabri , reprints of the imperial edict , the papal bull of excommunication, Decet Romanum Pontificem .

In view of this, it is remarkable that in 1517 Weyssenburger at the same time printed a text supposedly from the hands of Martin Luther , Tractatulus de hiis qui ad ecclesias confugiunt tam iudicibus secularibus quam ecclesie rectoribus monasteriorum prelatis perutilis in Landshut, initially anonymously, and later in 1520 Luther as the author. Whether, as Karl Knaake (1883) suspects, Christoph Scheurl , who was still in business contact with the printer from Nuremberg, sent Luther's manuscript to him remains hypothetical . It also remains unclear to what extent he sympathized with the Lutheran position, although he published some writings from which an unequivocal openness and affection for the Lutheran cause can be recognized. With the Second Bavarian Religious Mandate of October 2, 1524, censorship was introduced in Bavaria. Accordingly, the Weyssenburger Offizin no longer printed any Lutheran writings.

A work by Johann Fundling († 1538) was published in the Weyssenburger printing house in 1526 : Anzaigung zwaier false tongues of Luther and how he condemned the paurn with the other with the other sy , a Luther-critical writing that deals with the ambivalent position of Martin Luther's fought in the German Peasants' War . Fundling tried to give the impression that Luther was a deformity similar to this horn, which had outgrown the order of the Augustinian hermits and was now spreading its wickedness over the world. Luther did this through his writings and books. In his first writings, Luther encouraged the peasants to take action against the authorities. In his later works, however, Luther granted the nobility the right to bloodily suppress the peasant uprisings.

In 1533 Weyssenburger left the city of Landshut again; he then lived in Passau from 1534 until his death. His successors were Georg († 1548) and Martin Apian, who worked there until 1548.

literature

  • Karl Schottenloher: The Landshut book printer of the 16th century. Publication of the Gutenberg Society Volume 21, Mainz 1930

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bavarian Musicians' Lexicon Online (BMLO)
  2. ↑ K. Steiff: Weyssenburger, Johannes, overview ADB 42 (1897)
  3. ↑ Peter Käser: 500 years of the Reformation . October 2017, accessed November 4, 2018
  4. ↑ Johann Heinrich Wolf (Ed.): General Bavarian Chronicle or History Yearbooks: with particular relation to d. 19th century a monthly for all classes, vol. 4, Munich 1845, p. 321
  5. ↑ Luisa Rubini Messerli, Alexander Schwarz: Voices, texts and images between the Middle Ages and early modern times. Vol. 17 TAUSCH, Text Analysis in University and School Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main / New York / Oxford / Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-03911-760-4 , p. 14
  6. ↑ according to Barbara Emme, Dietrich Emme (ed.): Martin Luther. Treatise on Church Asylum Law. Verlag Dietrich Emme, Regensburg, ISBN 3-9800661-1-8 PDF; 192 KB, 105 pages , here p. 15, three prints A – B are listed, the titles of which vary
  7. ^ Weimar edition of Luther's Works I, 1883, p. 1 fg.
personal data
SURNAME Weyssenburger, Johann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weissenburger, Johannes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Priest, printer
DATE OF BIRTH around 1465
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH around 1535
Place of death Passau