Thomas von Trattner
Johann Thomas Trattner , since 1764 Edler von Trattnern , (born December 20, 1719 in Jormannsdorf , Kingdom of Hungary , † July 31, 1798 in Vienna ) was an Austrian court printer , bookseller and publisher , Imperial Knight, nobleman of the Kingdom of Hungary, Lord of the Lordship of Ebergassing and Lower Austrian farmer .
Life
Trattner came from a humble background and was the son of an Evangelical farmer . His mother died giving birth and his father two years later. Trattner was then raised by an aunt in Wiener Neustadt , Lower Austria, and only learned the elementary skills of reading, writing and arithmetic at school. After working on a farm for a few years, in 1735, at the age of 16, he was able to do an apprenticeship with the printer Samuel Müller.
Following his apprenticeship in 1739, on the recommendation of his teacher, Trattner got a job as a typesetter at the court printer Johann Peter van Ghelen in Vienna, whose large library he avidly used for further training.
After a few years, Trattner was able to set up his own business as a publisher by purchasing Johann Jakob Jahn's print shop in 1748 . Thanks to his commercial skills, he soon turned it into a flourishing company. By means of cheap offers, Trattner succeeded in getting the order of the Jesuits to have almost all of its textbooks and tracts printed by him.
On the intercession of Gerard van Swieten , the personal physician of Empress Maria Theresa , Trattner was appointed by her as court printer in 1752 . He took up this position in the same year as the successor to his teacher Ghelen. Associated with this was the privilege of being able to produce all of the school and textbooks required in Austria. To this end, Trattner set up a large company in the Vienna suburb of Lerchenfeld .
In the next few years Trattner was able to expand his company into a group, as he bought or founded paper mills , lead foundries and bookbinders as branches throughout the Habsburg Monarchy .
Due to the political situation in the Holy Roman Empire (or the German-speaking countries), Trattner had already bought the works of German and Swiss writers such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Friedrich Schiller , Johann Gottfried Herder , Gotthold Ephraim Lessing , Christoph Martin Wieland and others at low cost . a. reprinted. Not only did these authors, as was customary at the time, not receive any royalties , many of these works were "defused" by Trattner after the Austrian censorship and thus z. T. considerably disfigured. As a result, Trattner made bitter enemies, especially in the northern German areas, among the booksellers and publishers there , who suffered significant financial losses due to Trattner's reprints .
One of his fiercest opponents was the Leipzig publisher Philipp Erasmus Reich , who in the middle of the 18th century took action against the reprint of his and other successful Saxon works. In other Trattner belonged to the kingdom of booksellers , which opposed the introduction of in Leipzig by Reich initiated net trade in the German book trade of the 18th century active vorgingen by the now more expensive, but reprinted even more desirable works of the North German publisher and a new commercial form for the Book trade demanded.
Trattner always referred to critics about the special legal situation in Austria, which allows him to reprint or does not criminalize it.
- The reprint of a work is just a matter of trade (purchase and sale), so a ... mere negotium that cannot be denied to a good printer.
In addition, with his privileges he could be sure of the protection of the imperial court in Vienna.
When Austrian writers began to suffer from this abuse over time, Aloys Blumauer had a vignette placed on the title page of his travestiers Aeneide , which shows a pack of dogs pounding on a human head. One of the dogs wears a collar with the letters "TvT". The picture is explained in the text of the Aeneide : the dogs are reprinters who attack a poet's head.
In 1764 Trattner was raised to the rank of imperial knighthood by Emperor Franz Stephan von Lothringen with the predicate Edler von Trattnern (sic!) And has since called himself Johann Thomas Edler von Trattner . From 1773 he published in Varaždin in Hungary, now Croatia, and from 1776 to 1793 in Agram (Zagreb, Croatia), where he also published the German newspaper Croatian Correspondent .
Private
Trattner married his first wife Anna von Retzenheim on August 9, 1750. She died at the age of 53 on May 16, 1775, was buried in the Schottenkirche and later reburied in the crypt in Wienerherberg in Lower Austria , southeast of Vienna. (The place belonged to his rule Ebergassing.) On September 15, 1776, he married Maria Theresia Nagel (1758–1793) in the parish church of Wienerherberg.
Trattner bought the Freisingerhof in 1773 on the Graben in Vienna's inner city and had Peter Mollner build a building that became known as the Trattnerhof and existed until 1911. After the Trattnerhof was demolished in 1912, the Trattnerhof alley was laid out between two new buildings .
Thomas von Trattner died in Vienna in 1798 at the age of 81. He found his final resting place in a burial chapel attached to the Wienerherberg church. In Austria, alongside Johann Peter van Ghelen (1673–1754) and Joseph Gerold (1749–1800), he was one of the great publishers of his time.
literature
- Christoph Augustynowicz, Johannes Frimmel (ed.): The printer Maria Theresa: Johann Thomas Trattner (1719-1798) and his media empire. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2019 (book research 10).
- Christof Capellaro: “Through work and favor”. On the business strategies of the large typographic entrepreneur Johann Thomas von Trattner (18th century) . Term paper, Humboldt University Berlin 2004, ( PDF file; 1.14 MB ).
- Hermine Cloeter : Johann Thomas Trattner. A major entrepreneur in Theresian Vienna . Böhlau, Graz 1952, (with wrong date of birth).
- Ursula Giese: Johann Thomas Edler von Trattner. Its importance as a printer, bookseller and publisher . In: Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens (AGB) 3, ISSN 0066-6327 , 1961, Sp. 1013-1454 (with wrong date of birth, with - incomplete but useful - bibliography of Trattnerdrucke).
- Ingeborg Jaklin: The Austrian textbook in the 18th century. From the Wiener Verlag Trattner and the Schulbuchverlag . Edition Praesens, Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-7069-0213-3 ( Book Research 3).
- Mark Lehmstedt : A straw that floods everything. Documents on the relationship between Philipp Erasmus Reich and Johann Thomas von Trattner. A contribution to the history of reprinting in Germany in the 18th century . In: Bibliothek und Wissenschaft 25, 1991, ISSN 0067-8236 , pp. 176-267.
- Anton Mayer: Trattner, Johann Thomas Edler von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 38, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1894, pp. 499-501.
- Reinhard Wittmann: History of the German book trade. An overview . Beck, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-406-35425-4 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Thomas von Trattner in the catalog of the German National Library
- Johann Thomas von Trattner in the Vienna History Wiki of the City of Vienna
- Entry on Trattner, Johann Thomas von in the Austria Forum (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
Remarks
- ↑ Date after: Polster, Gert: The families of today's large community Bad Tatzmannsdorf from a genealogical, social and economic-historical perspective. State examination at the Institute for Austrian Historical Research. Vienna 2001, p. 151 (based on: Pfarramt Pinkafeld, Taufbuch Vol III, 1712-1743). The information in the secondary literature (November 11 or December 20, 1717) is incorrect. Compare also the Trattner essay by Christof Capellaro under the web links
- ^ Entry in the website of the Berlin State Library
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Trattner, Thomas von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Trattner, Johann Thomas von (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austrian printer, bookseller and publisher |
| DATE OF BIRTH | uncertain: December 20, 1719 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Jormannsdorf , Kingdom of Hungary |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 31, 1798 |
| Place of death | Vienna |