Johann Fust
German printer (1400–1466)
Johann Fust or Faust (c. 1400 – October 30, 1466) was an early German printer.
Family background
Fust was born to a burgher family of Mainz, traceable back to the early thirteenth century. Members of the family held many civil and religious offices.
The name was written "Fust" until 1506, when Peter Schöffer, in dedicating the German translation of Livy to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, called his father-in-law "Faust." Thenceforward, the family assumed this name. The Fausts of Aschaffenburg, an old and quite distinct family, placed Johann Fust in their pedigree. Johann's brother Jacob, a goldsmith, was one of the burgomasters in 1462, when Mainz was stormed and sacked by the troops of Count Adolf II of Nassau, in the course of which he seems to have been killed (suggested by a document dated May 8, 1678).
Printing
Fust, along with his brother, was a member of the goldsmiths' guild of Strasbourg. Like many medieval goldsmiths, he also functioned as a financier.
Because of his connection with Johannes Gutenberg (died 1468), Fust has been called the inventor of printing, and the instructor as well as the partner of Gutenberg.
The public source identifies “Johann Fust” as german printer (1400–1466). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Johann, Fust and German.
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This entry incorporates text from “Johann Fust” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.