No portrait exists of Peter Schoeffer, the man who invented publishing as we know it. A number of group portraits of the “holy trinity” of printing have been made, including this mural by John W. Alexander in the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. Image courtesy Library of Congress
The Hof zum Humbrecht, the Bible workshop, from a sketch published in a German monograph on Schoeffer. After the break with Gutenberg and the fall of Mainz, Schoeffer and Fust established their printing works at the Haus zum Iseneck on the Brand, known later as the Druckhaus (Printing House). Schoeffer eventually acquired the Hof zum Humbrecht and moved his presses and business there.
Medieval Mainz was obliterated in a bombing raid on February 27, 1945. All that is left of the Hof zum Humbrecht today is the corner tower, integrated into the Haus zum Korb.
For many centuries the complex was called the Schöfferhof, and housed a brewery that still makes Schöfferhofer beer today. Image courtesy akpool.de
Schoeffer’s printer’s signet is a reworking of the family emblem of the Fusts. Bibliographer Cornelia Schneider has identified the characters in the shields as the Greek letters Chi and Lambda, symbols for Christ and Logos, the Word, while the three stars represent the Holy Trinity. Image courtesy Gutenberg Museum Mainz
The calligraphic colophon to a copy of Aristotle’s Organon written in Paris in 1449 by “Petrus de Gernsheim alias de Moguntiae” — Peter Schoeffer of Gernsheim and Mainz. Image courtesy Gutenberg Museum Mainz
A page from the Mainz Psalter, a triumph of three-color printing that bibliographers consider letterpress typography’s greatest achievement. Observed Sir Irvine Masson, author of the definitive study of the Psalter: “Schoeffer never again attempted such a tour de force.” Image courtesy Gutenberg Museum Mainz
Peter Schoeffer’s workshop printed hundreds of fine books. Take a stroll through this comprehensive exhibit of his printing, assembled at Southern Methodist University in Texas to mark the 500th anniversary of his death in 2003.