Altenburg printing workshop

The Thuringian town of Altenburg has been home to a notable printing press, the Fürstlich Sächsische Hofdruckerei since the early modern period. During the 19th century, the company became known as the Pierersche Hofbuchdruckerei , in East Germany renamed Druckhaus "Maxim Gorki" Altenburg, and since 1993 Druckerei zu Altenburg GmbH.

The ducal printing press was established in Hartenfels castle, Torgau in 1594 at the request of Friedrich Wilhelm I, Duke of Saxe-Weimar (1562–1602), and moved to Altenburg after the duke's death, in 1604.

It is one of 20 known presses which produced the Biblia germanica (1676) with the woodcut illustrations of Jakob Mores (d. c. 1612).[1]

It was sold to Johann Ludwig Richter in 1709 and remained in the possession of the Richter family until 1799. On 1 July 1799, it was bought by Johann Friedrich Pierer, from which point it became also known as Pierersche Hofbuchdruckerei. It was owned by the Pierer family until 1871. During this time, it achieved international notability with Pierer's Universal-Lexikon, an encyclopedia edited by Heinrich August Pierer (1st ed. 1824–1826).

In 1872, the business was sold to a group of Leipzig publishers, and the company was now known as Offene Handelsgesellschaft Pierersche Hofbuchdruckerei Stephan Geibel &Co., converted to a Kommanditgesellschaft (limited partnership) in 1919. By the 1920s, the company had become specialized on scientific publications. From 1947 to 1949, the company was used as the printing press for the Soviet military administration as part of German war reparations. In March 1950, the company's directors Hans Stephan and Max Geibel were arrested and imprisoned, and the company was confiscated by the state of Thuringia, as Betrieb und VEB Druckhaus "Maxim Gorki" Altenburg, in 1951 incorporated into Thüringer Volksverlag GmbH. In 1956, it was transferred to the Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften, now mostly printing scientific journals. With the collapse of the GDR it was registered as Maxim Gorki - Druck GmbH (1990–1992) and upgraded from lead types to photographic reproduction and offset printing. In 1993 it was privatized as Druckerei zu Altenburg GmbH, purchased by Simon Tafertshofer. The archives of the company, documenting the period of 1929 to 1975, were transferred to the Thuringian State Archive in 2001.

References

  1. ↑ "Gedruckt bey Gottfried Richtern/F.S. Hoffbuchdruckern zu Altenbug / und Samuel Adolph Müllern zu Jehna/1676" Wolfgang Schellmann, Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens (2012), 207ff.

External links

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