Christian Egenolff or Egenolph (26 July 1502 – 9 February 1555), also known as Christian Egenolff, the Elder, was the first important printer and publisher operating from

Frankfurt-am-Main Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian dialects, Hessian: , "Franks, Frank ford (crossing), ford on the Main (river), Main"), is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as o ...

, and best known for his ''Kräuterbuch'' and re-issue of books by

Adam Ries Adam Ries (17 January 1492 – 30 March 1559) was a German mathematician. He is also known by the name Adam Riese. Life Almost nothing is known about Ries' childhood, youth and education. The exact year of his birth is not known. The caption o ...

, Erasmus von Rotterdam and

Ulrich von Hutten Ulrich von Hutten (21 April 1488 – 29 August 1523) was a German knight, scholar, poet and satirist, who later became a follower of Martin Luther and a Protestant reformer. By 1519, he was an outspoken critic of the Roman Catholic Church. Hutte ...

. Egenolff was born in

Hadamar Hadamar is a small town in Limburg-Weilburg district in Hesse, Germany. Hadamar is known for its Clinic for Forensic Psychiatry/Centre for Social Psychiatry, lying at the edge of town, in whose outlying buildings is also found the Hadamar Memo ...

and studied

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...

at the

University of Mainz The Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (german: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) is a public research university in Mainz, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany, named after the printer Johannes Gutenberg since 1946. With approximately 32,000 stu ...

from 1516, but later took up the trade of bookprinting in

Strasbourg Strasbourg (, , ; german: Straßburg ; gsw, label=Bas Rhin Alsatian, Strossburi , gsw, label=Haut Rhin Alsatian, Strossburig ) is the prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est region of eastern France and the official seat of the Eu ...

, working for Wolfgang Küpfel and marrying Margarethe Karpf. He left Strasbourg in 1530 and started business as a printer/publisher and

typecasting In film, television, and theatre, typecasting is the process by which a particular actor becomes strongly identified with a specific character, one or more particular roles, or characters having the same traits or coming from the same social or ...

in Frankfurt-am-Main. Here he published more than 400 books over the next 25 years. His publications were often illustrated by the Nuremberg artist

Hans Sebald Beham Sebald Beham (1500–1550) was a German painter and printmaker, mainly known for his very small engravings. Born in Nuremberg, he spent the later part of his career in Frankfurt. He was one of the most important of the "Little Masters", the group ...

and

Virgil Solis Virgil Solis or Virgilius Solis (1514 – 1 August 1562), a member of a prolific family of artists, was a German draughtsman and printmaker in engraving, etching and woodcut who worked in his native city of Nuremberg. Biography His prints w ...

. Egenolff worked with

Jacques Sabon Jacques Sabon (born in Lyon, 1535; died in Frankfurt-am-Main, ca.1580-1590Sources vary, giving date of death as 1580 or 1590) was a French typefounder. He worked with Christian Egenolff in Frankfurt in 1555 and Christophe Plantin of Antwerp in ...

in developing new fonts. In October 1533 Egenolff was sued by Johannes Schott, a Strasbourg publisher, for infringement of copyright on ''Herbarium Vivae Icones'', illustrated by

Hans Weiditz Hans Weiditz the Younger, Hans Weiditz der Jüngere, Hans Weiditz II (1495 Freiburg im Breisgau - c1537 Bern), was a German Renaissance artist, also known as The Petrarch Master for his woodcuts illustrating Petrarch's ''De remediis utriusque fort ...

and compiled and annotated by

Otto Brunfels Otto Brunfels (also known as Brunsfels or Braunfels) (believed to be born in 1488 – 23 November 1534) was a German theologian and botanist. Carl von Linné listed him among the "Fathers of Botany". Life After studying theology and philosophy ...

. Egenolff in his defense, argued that nature could not be copyrighted and that plants stood as communal models for any artist.The Moment of Self-portraiture in German Renaissance Art
/ref> In 1535 he printed the German Bible and his own compilation of ''Chronica''. In the following years Egenolff published works by prominent authors such as

Hans Sachs Hans Sachs (5 November 1494 – 19 January 1576) was a German ''Meistersinger'' ("mastersinger"), poet, playwright, and shoemaker. Biography Hans Sachs was born in Nuremberg (). As a child he attended a singing school that was held in the churc ...

, Johann Eichmann aka Johann Dryander (1500–1560),

Sebastian Münster Sebastian Münster (20 January 1488 – 26 May 1552) was a German cartographer and cosmographer. He also was a Christian Hebraist scholar who taught as a professor at the University of Basel. His well-known work, the highly accurate world map, '' ...

Philipp Melanchthon Philip Melanchthon. (born Philipp Schwartzerdt; 16 February 1497 – 19 April 1560) was a German Lutheran reformer, collaborator with Martin Luther, the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation, intellectual leader of the Lu ...

and

Sebastian Franck Sebastian Franck (20 January 1499 Donauwörth, Swabia – c. 1543 Basel, Switzerland) was a 16th-century German freethinker, humanist, and radical reformer. Biography Franck was born in 1499 in Donauwörth, Swabia. Because of this he styled hims ...

. He died in

and was buried in the Peterskirchhof in Frankfurt. His daughter, Magdalena Egenolff, married

Adam Lonicer Adam Lonicer, Adam Lonitzer or Adamus Lonicerus (10 October 1528 – 29 May 1586) was a German botanist, noted for his 1557 revised version of Eucharius Rösslin's herbal. Lonicer was born in Marburg, the son of a theologian and philologist. He ...

, one of Egenolff's employees. Lonicer became a director of the firm after Egenolff's death, publishing no fewer than four editions of the ''Kräuterbuch'' between 1557 and 1577. Egenolff's widow, Margarethe, carried on the business until 1572 and afterwards his children until 1602.

Bibliography

*''Christian Egenolff : 1502 – 1555 ; ein Frankfurter Meister des frühen Buchdrucks aus Hadamar'', Hrsg. Kulturvereinigung Hadamar, Limburg : Glaukos (2002)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Egenolff, Christian German printers 1502 births 1555 deaths Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz alumni German publishers (people) 16th-century German people Burials at St Peter's Cemetery, Frankfurt