November 1455, Mainz. Johannes Gutenberg loses a lawsuit over a debt, and with it his workshop and his unfinished Bibles, the biggest project of his life. The winner is his creditor Johann Fust, and at his side stands Peter Schöffer, until then Gutenberg's collaborator.
A loan from Fust: who paid for the first printing house
Gutenberg had an invention but no capital. To build a workshop and start printing, he needed money. He found it with Johann Fust, a Mainz merchant and banker.
Fust lent Gutenberg 800 guilders twice, 1,600 in total. The workshop equipment served as collateral. Whether Fust planned from the start to end up with the workshop cannot be determined from the sources.
Helmasperger's notarial instrument
On November 6, 1455, notary Ulrich Helmasperger drew up a document about the dispute in which Fust sued Gutenberg for repayment of the loan with interest. Fust claimed the money had not been used for the work it was intended for. The case was decided in favor of the creditor.
Gutenberg lost his workshop and his unfinished Bibles, which passed into Fust's hands. Helmasperger's instrument is today kept in Göttingen and is among the most important documents about the beginnings of printing.
Peter Schöffer: from journeyman to partner
Peter Schöffer came from Gernsheim, trained as a scribe, and worked in Paris. He came to Mainz as a scribe and, by the traditional account, worked for Gutenberg as his best journeyman.
According to the traditional account, Schöffer testified against his master. Soon afterwards he became Fust's partner and married his daughter Christina. The workshop continued as Fust & Schöffer and in 1457 printed the Mainz Psalter.
Schöffer was such a good engraver that he is the one credited with perfecting Gutenberg's types into the form we know from surviving incunabula. - According to contemporary sources and modern typographic analysis
Fust and the Faust legend
The name Fust sounds like Faust, and according to one theory the legend of Doctor Faust, who sold his soul to the devil, grew out of it. Historians consider this uncertain: the Faust legend probably attaches rather to Johann Georg Faust, who lived several generations later. Goethe later drew on the legend.
The speed at which printing produced identical pages probably amazed contemporaries, though: hundreds of identical sheets without a single scribe.
What happened to Gutenberg?
The story doesn't have a happy ending, but neither is it tragic. Gutenberg did not give up. With the help of another patron, Conrad Humery, he started up a small printing house again. He printed several smaller works. In 1465, the Archbishop of Mainz, Adolph II, appointed him a court gentleman - which brought him an annuity, clothes, and wine for the rest of his life. He died in 1468, poor, but not forgotten.
Fust & Schöffer prospered meanwhile. They published books with colophons in which they stated their names. You won't find Gutenberg's name anywhere there. Fust died in 1466, Schöffer carried on printing, and after him the workshop was run by his son Johann.
We in our Scriptorium chose a different role model - Albrecht Pfister of Bamberg, who printed illustrated books in German. But more on that next time.
Read more about the lives of those who came before Gutenberg - scribes and monks in medieval scriptoria - in the article Three fingers write, the whole body suffers.