Lienhart Holl

Lienhart Holl († after 1492) is the third documented printer in the Free Imperial City of Ulm . With his publishing house in the 1480s, he increased the city's fame as the place where important printed works were published. Holl's name also appears in different spellings such as Lienhart or Leonardus Hol , Leonhard or Leonhart Holl and Lienhart Holle . The first world atlas printed north of the Alps succeeded him as a masterly masterpiece in 1482, but at the same time contained the germ of his economic decline two years later.

Life

Information about Holl's life that has come to the present is sparse. Lienhart Holl, who has been in Ulm since 1478, initially worked as a mold cutter and mold dealer. He made playing cards and gained experience in making woodcuts . Then he turned to letterpress printing , which before him only the incunabula printers Johann Zainer the Elder and Conrad Dinckmut practiced in Ulm . During the creative period from 1482 to 1484, he produced outstanding works of early printing, which will be discussed below.

The success of the book “ Book of Examples of the Old Wise Men ”, which contained fables and prompted reprinters, did not save Holl from ruin, which in turn was rooted in the elaborate design of the previously printed colored Cosmographia . In the beginning, book production required high capital, which could often only be raised by borrowing. A lack of acceptance of the illustrated printed works or errors in their calculations suddenly had a drastic effect when it came to complying with the urging of creditors. In 1484 Holl had to leave the imperial city of Ulm because of his debts. Johann Reger , who worked as a printer, was able to secure his printing blocks and types, and in 1486 he used them to produce another edition of Cosmographia .

After being evicted from the site, Holl appears to have attempted to return to Ulm later. But after a recorded entry in the guild books of the city in 1492, its trace is lost in the dark of history.

Works

Cosmographia

The Greek scholar Klaudios Ptolemaios created the atlas Geographike Hyphegesis in the 2nd century as a guide for a cartographic representation of the world known in his time. Jacobus Angelus translated his text into Latin. This work was published in print in 1477 in Bologna and in 1478 in Rome. The Benedictine monk Nicolaus Germanus , who drew a map of the world and 26 individual maps in Italy in the 15th century , relied on this . Lienhart Holl again took as a template a manuscript by the monk Nicolaus Germanus, dedicated to Pope Paul II , his third and final adaptation of the Ptolemy translation of Jacobus Angelus. Holl also added six more maps to his printed work: cartographic representations of Spain, France, Italy, Palestine and Northern Europe with Scandinavia. The northern map was created by the Danish geographer Claudius Clavus . On July 16, 1482, Lienhart Holl printed the book, the first world atlas produced outside of Italy.

World map of Cosmographia (1482)

Holl used the largest roman type of the incunable period for this book . It contains another special feature: on the large map of the world above, the person who made the woodcut passed his name on to posterity for the first time: " Insculptum est per Johannê • Schnitzer de Armßheim " (Johannes • Schnitzer from Armsheim ).

The Ulm World Atlas is counted among the typographic masterpieces. Lienhart Holl took great care in the artistic equipment, obtained shelf paper - paper of unusual size and strength - from Milan and selected a large, easily legible Antiqua type for his project. The exquisite design remained unsuccessful and ultimately led Holl to bankruptcy.

Book of examples of the ancient sages

On May 28, 1483, Lienhart Holl published his first edition of the Book of Examples of the Old Wise Men . In doing so, he was guided by two editions of the printer Konrad Feyner that had previously appeared in Urach . Holl made 126 new full-page woodcuts and sold the lavishly illustrated book. Unlike the Cosmographia , it met with greater demand, which encouraged him to publish two more editions, on July 24, 1483 and June 2, 1484. According to experts, the work has extremely high quality woodcuts and is one of the most splendid early prints of the Book of Examples of the Wise Men .

The Book of Examples of the Wise Men is a collection of fables in which human animals appear. The stories are intended to make clear, intelligent, good and well-considered actions clear to their readers. In the 13th century, Johann von Capua translated the Kalīla wa Dimna collection from the Orient into Latin under the title “ Directorium humanae vitae ”. Antonius von Pforr († 1483), a clergyman from the Breisach area and active in Rottenburg am Neckar , made the German translation of the work, which he dedicated to Count Eberhard von Württemberg-Urach and which Konrad Feyner first printed in Urach in 1481.

The farmer from Bohemia

Around 1483 Lienhart Holl printed an edition of the Ackermann from Bohemia consisting of 26 sheets .

Golden Bull of Emperor Charles IV.

A book edition of the Golden Bull , proclaimed by Emperor Charles IV in 1356, was the last of Holl's incunabula. The book, printed on parchment , is dated September 6, 1484 and probably only had a small edition. The medieval imperial constitution is based on the land peace law of August 14, 1442 of the Roman-German king and later Emperor Friedrich III. added.

literature

• Ernst Kelchner :  Holl Leonhard . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1880, p. 747 f.
• Peter Amelung: The early printing in the German southwest 1473-1500. Vol. 1: Ulm . ISBN 3-7772-7929-3 .
• Karl-Heinz Meine (editor): The Ulmer Geographia of Ptolemy from 1482 . ISBN 3-87437-195-6 .

Web links

Commons : Lienhart Holl  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Lienhart Holl in the catalog of the German National Library
• Prints by Lienhart Holl in the complete catalog of the cradle prints

Images of works:

• Liechtenstein Museum: Map from the Cosmographia
• Mainz City Library: World map, colored woodcut, Holl print 1482
• Göttingen treasures: Directorium humanae vitae , Holl-Druck 1483
• Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library: Six Holls maps from 1482
• University and State Library Darmstadt: Claudius Ptolemaeus Cosmographia , Holl print of July 16, 1482 (digital view)
• Bayerische Staatsbibliothek: Johannes de Capua Das buoch der Weißhait der alten Wagen , Holl print from May 28, 1483 (digital view)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Historical Lexicon of Bavaria: Ulm, Reichsstadt , queried on August 5, 2011
2. ↑ City of Ulm: Claudius Ptolemaeus ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 38 kB), accessed on August 5, 2011 
3. ↑ Marion Janzin, Joachim Güntner: The Book of the book , page 131. ISBN 978-3-89993-805-0 , polled 5 August 2011
4. ↑ FAZ.net of November 12, 2005: Constantinople, Rome, Eichstätt , queried on August 5, 2011
5. ↑ University Library Bern: Cultural Heritage - Map Holdings in the Central Library ( Memento of the original from September 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 4.2 MB), accessed on August 9, 2011 
6. ↑ Typolexikon.de: Antiqua , accessed on August 9, 2011
7. ↑ Göttingen Treasures: The First German World Atlas , accessed on August 5, 2011
8. ^ Romy Günthart: German-language literature in the early Basler Buchdruck (approx. 1470–1510) , page 62. ISBN 3-8309-1712-0 , requested on August 5, 2011
9. ↑ Iris Carolin Hoger: Text and image in the first Ulm print of the book of examples by Anton von Pforr , dissertation, Hamburg 2010 (PDF; 700 kB), requested on August 5, 2011
10. ↑ OPAL Lower Saxony: Directorium humanae vitae  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed on August 5, 2011  
11. ↑ General catalog of Wiegendrucke.de: Ackermann from Böhmen , requested on August 9, 2011
12. ↑ Ulm City Library: The Golden Bull ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 51 kB), accessed on August 9, 2011