Lucas Brandis

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Lucas Brandis (* before 1450 in Delitzsch ; † after 1500 probably in Lübeck ; also written by Lukas Brandis ) was an important printer and typographer of the incunable period , who mainly worked in Merseburg , Magdeburg and Lübeck.

Life

Book advertisement by Lucas Brandis, around 1478 ( GW 5014)

Lucas Brandis belonged with his brothers Marcus , Matthäus and Moritz to an important family of book printers. He was the first printer to settle in Lübeck, which at the end of the Middle Ages was the most populous city in the German Empire alongside Cologne and Vienna . Brandis graduated from Leipzig University . Where and when he learned the printing trade cannot be said with certainty. However, the comparative analysis of his early type material makes it probable that he in the Mainzer Offizin von Johannes Fust and Peter Schöffer were trained as book printers. Lucas Brandis founded his own printing company in Merseburg. The first dated prints ( Augustine ' De quaestionibus Orosii and Aristotle ' Lapidarius ) appeared in 1473.

Brandis went to Lübeck before the end of this year. There he began to work on what is probably his most important work, the 474-sheet world chronicle Rudimentum novitiorum . On August 5, 1475, he completed this extensive project. As a result he still printed u. a. a breviary Lubicense , the Scala coeli and Flavius ​​Josephus ' De antiquitatibus and De bello Judaico . But Brandis also published popular-language titles, such as B. a Low German Psalter as well as De nye Ee (1478) and the level of the mynschlicken containers (1476).

In spite of all productive efforts, his shop was not a business success. In 1479 at the latest he left Lübeck and went to Magdeburg to work as a type caster for the printer Bartholomäus Ghotan . The types for his Missale Magdeburgense were probably made by Lucas Brandis. Brandis returned to Lübeck after a short time and in 1483 completed the printing of a missal for the Danish diocese of Odense ( Missale Othoniense ).

Due to a lack of sources, hardly any verifiable statements can be made over the following years. A larger printed work is only known from 1497, when Lucas Brandis, together with his brother Matthäus, published a Breviarium Othoniense . After that, the economic difficulties of his shop increased even further. Lucas Brandis' last dated printed work ( Petrus von Ravennas Repetitio C. Inter alia de emunitate ecclesiae ) comes from the year 1499. A court record of July 15, 1500 gives information about his distressed financial situation. Brandis was ordered not to leave Lübeck until his debts were settled and not to send any property from there. There is no definite knowledge about his further life. He probably died after 1500.

plant

World map from the Rudimentum novitiorum , GDR postage stamp from 1990
Last page of the Rudimentum novitiorum with colophon

Lucas Brandis Offizin is assigned at least 59 known prints. Since only a few of his publications have a complete dating, this assignment was based on a comparative analysis of the types. Lucas Brandis used a strong, round Gothic script, which was subsequently widely used in northern Germany and was named the Brandistype after its creator .

His most important printed work is the Rudimentum novitiorum , a monumental world history, which was probably written by a clergyman and, among other things. a. also served as a textbook for training clergy . The work was decorated with numerous initials and ornamental strips and contained over a hundred woodcut illustrations , including the first printed world map and the first printed map of the Holy Land based on information from Burchardus de Monte Sion, which was also printed here for the first time . Although the Rudimentum novitiorum was even translated into French and printed in Paris under the title La Mer de hystoires , the project ultimately turned out to be a loss for Lucas Brandis. In addition to the Rudimentum novitiorum, the production of the first printed book in Middle Low German and the printing of the first text of antiquity in northern Germany (Flavius ​​Josephus' De bello Judaico ) are rated as lasting achievements by Brandis .

Lucas Brandis already used modern forms of marketing to distribute his publications. Before moving to Magdeburg in 1479, he published an advertising book ad in which 16 titles were listed (see illustration). Today 13 of them have survived in at least one copy.

Digital copies

literature

  • Ursula Altmann: The achievements of the book printer named Brandis in the context of the book history of the 15th century . Diss. Berlin, Humboldt-Univ., 1974. ( Text as PDF file )
  • Wesley A. Brown: The World Image Expressed in the Rudimentum Novitiorum (Philip Lee Phillips Society, Occasional Paper Series, No. 3) Washington, DC: Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress, 2000.
  • Alken Bruns and Dieter Lohmeier (eds.): The Lübeck book printers in the 15th and 16th centuries. Letterpress for the Baltic region . Heide in Holstein: Boyens, 1994. ISBN 3-8042-0668-9
  • D. Debes: Lucas Brandis . In: Lexicon of the entire book industry (LGB). Edited by Severin Corsten. 2nd, completely revised and expanded edition. Vol. I. Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1989. p. 527. ISBN 3-7772-8721-0
  • Ferdinand Geldner :  Brandis, Lucas. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 525 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Ferdinand Geldner: The German incunabula printer. A manual of the German printer of the XV. Century by place of printing. Part 1. The German language area. Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1968. ISBN 3-7772-6825-9
  • August Wilhelm Kazmeier: A previously unknown bookseller advertisement and other early prints by Lukas Brandis from an old castle library . Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen Vol. 57 (1940), pp. 292–299
  • Otto Mühlbrecht:  Brandis, Lucas . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876, p. 249.
  • E. Voulliéme: The German Printers of the Fifteenth Century . 2nd Edition. Verlag der Reichdruckerei, Berlin 1922.

Web links

Commons : Lucas Brandis  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Falk Eisermann: The Gutenberg Galaxy's Dark Matter: Lost Incunabula, and Ways to Retrieve Them. In: Flavia Bruni and Andrew Pettegree (Eds.) Lost Books. Reconstructing the Print World of Pre-Industrial Europe. Leiden / Boston: Brill 2016 (= Library of the Written Word 46), pp. 31–54. doi : 10.1163 / 9789004311824_003 , here p. 52
  2. ↑ Postilla super epistolas et evangelia in the complete catalog of incidental prints (GW number 11932)
personal data
SURNAME Brandis, Lucas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brandis, Lukas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German book printer in Lübeck
DATE OF BIRTH before 1450
PLACE OF BIRTH Delitzsch
DATE OF DEATH after 1500