Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/24

 12 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE known to have nourished before the year 1500. In Mentz itself, the cradle of the art, there were no less than five printing-presses, in Ulm six, in Basle sixteen, in Augsburg twenty, 1 in Cologne twenty-one. Stras- burg was renowned for its many excellent printers. In Nuremberg, up to the year 1500, twenty-five printers were enrolled as citizens. 2 The most eminent of these after the year 1470 was Anthony Koberger, who had twenty-four presses at work, employed over a hundred men as type-setters, proof-correctors, printers, binders and illuminators, besides carrying on work outside, chiefly in Basle, Strasburg, and Lyons. ' By diligence and foresight,' writes his countryman, NeudoerfFer, ' Koberger accumulated a large fortune.' The gigantic aqueduct still in existence, hewn out of the rock, and reaching from the city moat to his house in the Aegidienplatz, is a witness to the scale of his printing establishment. 3 Enterprise of almost equal dimensions was developed by Hans Schonsperger in Augsburg, as well as by the Basle publishers, Johann Amerbach, Wolfgang Lachner, and Johann Froben. The latter, designated as ' the prince of publishers,' ranks among the most accomplished printers whom the world has yet known. 4 Numbers of the ablest men devoted their 1 Schaab, iii. 421-423; Graesse, iii. 157-163; Ennen, iii. 1034-1043. For the printed works, see Faulmann, pp. 197-253. 2 Baader, work on the Besearches of Former Ages, vii. 119, 120. 3 See in the complete works of Hase, Koberger, fol. 49 ; Faulmann, pp. 178 194 ; Kapp, pp. 139-141. Zainer owned a printing house in Bologna in the year 1481. In the year 1483, Erhard Ratdolt published in Venice an Explanation of the Ten Commandments. 1 Stockmeyer and Reber, pp. 86 115. The works which were issued from the establishment of Johannes Winterburger between 1492 and 1519 compare well with those of Basle, Nuremberg, and Augsburg. See A. Mayer's History of Printing, 1482-1882 (Vienna, 1882).