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john gutenberg at strasburg
over his subsequent life; she did not follow him to Mentz; it is not certain that she was living in 1444.
In the year 1439, John Gutenberg again comes before the court, and again as defendant. The testimony brought out on this trial reveals Gutenberg to us as an experimenter and inventor. The official record[1] is long, and full of matter that seems irrelevant, but it presents a curious picture of the time, which deserves study. This is the judged statement of the case, as delivered by him on the 12th day of December, 1439:
We,[2] Cune Nope, master and counselor at Strasburg, hereby make known to all who shall see this writing, or shall hear the reading thereof, that George Dritzehen, our fellow-citizen, has appeared before us in proper person, and with a full power of attorney for his brother Claus Dritzehen, and has cited John Gensfleisch, of Mentz, called Gutenberg, our fellow-resident, and has deposed that the late Andrew Dritzehen, his brother, had inherited from his deceased father valuable effects, which he had used as security, and from which he had realized a considerable sum of money; that he had entered into copartnership with John Gutenberg and others, and [with them] had formed a company or association, and that he had paid over his money to Gutenberg [the chief] of this association; and that for a certain period of time they had carried on. and practised together their business, from which they had reaped a good profit; but that, in consequence of the speculations of the association, Andrew Dritzehen had made himself personally liable, in one way and another, for the lead and other materials which he had purchased, and which were necessary in this art, or trade, and which he [George] would also have been responsible
- ↑ For more than three hundred years this important document, with other records of the courts of Strasburg, rested unknown and undisturbed in the old tower Pfennigthurm, in which place it was discovered by Wenkler, the keeper of the records. He communicated this fact to Schoepflin, who, perceiving its value, made it the great feature of the Vindiciæ Typographicæ. The record is imperfect, for it does not contain all the testimony of all the witnesses. Whether this deficiency is due to the neglect of the recorder, or to the decay or mutilation of the record, has not been fully explained. Schoepflin, who says it is written in an almost obsolete German dialect hard to be understood, reprinted it in full, accompanied with a translation in Latin, which has been censured as inaccurate. Dr. Dibdin, and a few carping bibliographers, who looked with disfavor on all newly discovered documents which obliged them to revise their own theories, have tried to throw discredit on this record, but its authenticity is now recognized as beyond controversy, The records were placed in the Library of Strasburg for safety, but they were destroyed by the Prussians during the siege of that city in 1870.
- ↑ Conventionally used for I.
