Johann Fust

Wikipedia:

Johann Fust or Faust (c. 1400 – October 30, 1466) was an early German printer.

. . .Johann Fust was not much of a printer but more of a businessman and a salesman. Fust loaned 800 guilders (with an interest of 6%) to Johannes Gutenberg with which to start his original project. Later, another large sum of money was handed over from Fust to Gutenberg. At this point, Fust felt as if he needed to be included as a partner on the project since he had now invested so much into it.

There were all but three Bibles left to be completed when Fust decided to foreclose on his loans. On November 6, 1455, Fust demanded 2,026 guilders from Gutenberg. He also revealed in court that he had to borrow the money he gave to finance Gutenberg at 6% in order to even give the loan. All in all, Gutenberg ended up having to pay 1,200 guilders to Fust along with all of the completed Bibles, unfinished books, and his workshop.

From that point on Gutenberg was hardly ever heard from again and Fust went into partnership with Peter Schöffer. Schöffer had learned all the fine skills of printing from Gutenberg. This meant that Schöffer would be able to use the same techniques he had learned and practiced, while the savvy businessman Fust could find ways to do what he was best at, which was to sell the books that they were making. They made copies of the famed "42-line Bible" in both paper and vellum. The paper ones were sold for 40 guilders each, while the ones on vellum were sold for 75 guilders apiece.[7] Fust set up a sales branch in Paris as well, expanding the sales of this Bible on a global level (long before any type of global businesses were even thought about in society). Paris is also believed to be the place where Fust died in 1466.

. . .According to some sources, the speed and precise duplication abilities of the printing press caused French officials to claim that Fust was a magician, leading some historians to connect Fust with the legendary character of Faust. Friedrich Maximilian Klinger's Faust, a printer, may borrow more from Fust than other versions of the Faust legend.

. . .After Peter Schöffer married Fust's daughter, Christina, the printing business of Fust and Schöffer carried on through offspring. Fust and Schöffer had done much to keep their printing methods secret, even going as far as to make their employees swear by oath that they would not reveal anything. However, the secrets were revealed anyway. Schöffer's sons (Fust's grandsons) Johann and Peter continued on in their father's and grandfather's footsteps. The younger Peter's son Ivo also made printing his career. Johann Fust may not have started out as a printing man but he certainly ended up influencing a whole new generation of printing. What started out in Germany spread to other parts of the world. It seemed unlikely that the original partnership between Fust and Gutenberg would end up having the effect that it ultimately did on the printing press. Many people will credit and continue to credit Gutenberg for much of the success of the 42-line Bible and for printing in general. The facts do state, however, that if it was not for Johann Fust that this Bible would have never been created in the first place. Fust controlled the sales aspect as well and branched out this creation to people in other countries. Thanks to Fust's partnership with Schöffer a whole new generation of printers were brought into the world. The argument remains who is the true father of the printing press. Johann Fust is the name that most people still do not know today. Johann Fust will always be the man who turned his back on Gutenberg; however, he will also always be the man that truly began the printing press (through cunning and greed but there will also be people who call it business strategy).

Video Title: A Media Revolution: The Gutenberg Bible. Source: Dr. Jörn Günther Rare Books. Date Published: February 13, 2018. Description:

The famous Gutenberg Bible - the crown jewel of printed books - is Europe's first substantial book that was printed using movable metal type. A true work of art, this book's majestic craftsmanship has never been surpassed. The present 13 continuous leaves comprise the complete Book of Joshua from a copy of the first printed edition of the Latin Bible from 1454. They constitute the largest fragment from the Gutenberg Bible in private hands. 

Book History from the Margins: What Gutenberg Owed to Medieval Romani Printers - Kristina Richardson

Related: Aldus Manutius.

Video Title: Book History from the Margins: What Gutenberg Owed to Medieval Romani Printers - Kristina Richardson. Source: WarburgInstitute. Date Published: June 5, 2024. Description: 

In this talk Kristina Richardson (University of Virginia) shows how Roma and other traveling groups, who were known collectively in the Middle East as Strangers, had been blockprinting religious texts since the 900s. They printed in Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac scripts. As some Romani groups migrated from Ottoman territories into Bavaria and Bohemia in the 1410s, they may have carried this printing technology into the Holy Roman Empire.

Kristina Richardson is Professor of History and Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Virginia. She specialises in histories of non-elite groups in the Middle East. She is the author of two monographs: Difference and Disability in the Medieval Islamic World (2012) and Roma in the Medieval Islamic World: Literacy, Culture, and Migration (2022). This last one was awarded the Dan David Prize, the Monica H. Green Prize for Distinguished Medieval Research from the Medieval Academy of America, and Honorable Mention for the Middle East Medievalists Book Prize. She also co-edited the Notebook of Kamāl al-Dīn the Weaver in 2021. She is currently writing a book on free and unfree South Asian and East African agricultural laborers in early Islamic Iraq. 

This event took place on 9 May 2024 and is part of the Warburg Director's Seminar series, which brings leading scholars and writers to the Institute to share new work and fresh perspectives on key issues in their fields.

"It is thought that the actual movement of block printing technology from East Asia to Central Asia and into West Asia, or what we call today the Middle East, was probably facilitated by Buddhists. Buddhists, again, were the earliest printers in East Asia. And it is thought that a particular family, actually they're called the Barmakids, and they were serving in the administration of 9th century Baghdad as counselors and advisors, and it's probable that through their connections there might have been the introduction of the print.

So this is a well known phenomenon. However it has been minimized in histories of the Middle East. But what I will argue going forward is that certainly it was Buddhists bringing print, and also paper technology into West Asia, but it was adapted mostly by a minority group who referred to themselves as the Strangers. We would refer to them probably today more along the lines of traveling people, and it was astrologers among them who actually were producing these prints." - Kristina Richardson, an excerpt from the video lecture below.

David Lynch Elephant Man Interview

 

"I love ideas. And I always say that a script is organized ideas. And if you don't write the script it's almost the same as catching ideas when you read the script. You read a script, anything comes alive in your brain. And you see it, you feel it. And you hear it. And those words conjuring that thing, that thing that comes alive in the brain is what you follow. When you catch original ideas the same thing occurs in the brain. You see it, feel it, and hear it. And you just stay true to that. It doesn't really matter. It's the ideas that matter." - David Lynch.

Michał Boym

Wikipedia:

Michał Piotr Boym, SJ (Chinese: 卜彌格; pinyin: Bǔ Mígé;[1] c. 1612 – 1659) was a Polish Jesuit missionary to China, scientist and explorer. He was an early Western traveller within the Chinese mainland, and the author of numerous works on Asian fauna, flora and geography. The first European Chinese dictionary, published in 1670, is attributed to Boym.

. . .Boym is best remembered for his works describing the flora, fauna, history, traditions and customs of the countries he travelled through. During his first trip to China he wrote a short work on the plants and animals dwelling in Mozambique. The work was later sent to Rome, but was never printed. During his return trip he prepared a large collection of maps of mainland China and South-East Asia. He planned to expand it to nine chapters describing China, its customs and political system, as well as Chinese science and inventions. The merit of Boym's maps was that they were the first European maps to properly represent Korea as a peninsula rather than an island. They also took notice of the correct positions of many Chinese cities previously unknown to the westerners or known only by the semi-fabulous descriptions of Marco Polo. Boym also marked the Great Wall and the Gobi Desert. Although the collection was not published during Boym's lifetime, it extended the knowledge of China in the west.

. . .In his other works, such as Specimen medicinae Sinicae ("Chinese medicinal plants") and Clavis medica ad Chinarum doctrinam de pulsibus ("Key to the Medical Doctrine of the Chinese on the Pulse") he described the Chinese traditional medicine and introduced several methods of healing and diagnostics previously unknown in Europe, particularly measurement of the pulse. The latter book was likely written by the Dutch doctor and scholar Willem ten Rhijne.

Video Title: Who was Michał Boym and how did he get to China? O. Uziembło explains Polish-Chinese connections. Source: Poland Daily Live. Date Published: January 22, 2021.

Kurt Baschwitz

Wikipedia:

Siegfried Kurt Baschwitz (2 February 1886, Offenburg – 6 January 1968 Amsterdam), was a journalist, a professor of press, propaganda and public opinion, scholar on newspapers, and crowd psychology.

Baschwitz, who, as was customary in German middle class, was known by his second name Kurt, was a German Jew and a friend of Otto Frank, the father of Anne Frank. Baschwitz was called upon as an expert to advise on the publication of the Diary of Anne Frank and later again authenticate it.

. . .After World War II Kurt Baschwitz was reinstated as a private lecturer and then an ordinary lecturer at the University of Amsterdam.

In 1948 he became associate professor in the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences and four years later he was made full professor in press science, public opinion, and mass psychology.

In July 1948 he founded and became the first director of the Dutch Institute for the Science of the Press which organized courses for the training of young journalists, as well as established ones. Baschwitz was considered to be a pioneer in communication science and mass psychology and contributed much to the international exchange of information and research among scholars in the field. First as a driving force behind the International Society for "Publicistics", and then as a key figure preparing the International Association of Mass Communication Research IAMCR.

After 1945, one of his major efforts was to rediscover information on the field had been lost because of the war and on the previous underground press. Gazette, the international journal that he founded in 1955, acted as a liaison centre for research and researchers from different parts of the world. His later works all dealt with the mass psychology of witch hunts, but were also a reflection on the mechanisms of mass persecutions in general, and those of Jews in particular. His magnum opus, in his own opinion, Hexen und Hexenprozesse: Geschichte eines Massenwahns und seiner Bekaempfung which discussed methods of fighting attempts at mass delusion appeared in 1963 and was printed in several languages. Baschwitz also contributed to the founding of a ‘seminarium’ for mass psychology, public opinion and propaganda at the University of Amsterdam. In 1972 it was renamed the Baschwitz Institute for collective behavior studies, before merging with the public opinion section within the department for communication studies in 1985.

An excerpt from, "Kurt Baschwitz: A Pioneer of Communication Studies and Social Psychology" By Jaap van Ginneken, Amsterdam University Press, 2018, Introduction:

Kurt Baschwitz (1886-1968) had a lifelong fascination for ‘the riddle of the mass’ in both its visible and invisible forms. He was a major pioneer of communication and media studies on the European continent, an early student of the social, political, and mass psychology of crowds, publics, audiences, and public opinion, as well as a versatile social historian. Half a century after his death, however, he risks being forgotten and misunderstood, falling through the cracks of history.

Baschwitz was one of the many founders of the social sciences who came from a Jewish background, and who were forced to flee the Hitler regime. Fate dictated that he made it no further than The Netherlands: then still neutral, later occupied anyway. He did not reach the Anglo-American world, which came to dominate the global linguistic, cultural, intellectual, and scientific spheres after the war.

After Baschwitz’s death, one commemorative article noted: ‘Unlike colleagues like Karl Mannheim, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Paul Lazarsfeld and Kurt Lewin, he did not end up in [the United Kingdom or] the United States’. This contributed to his unique contributions being overlooked. In 1986, upon the centenary of his birth, his successors from both press history and mass psychology joined together to claim that ‘Baschwitz’ work deserves a good English translation, or at least a summary’. 

Upon a later jubilee, one of those successors repeated: ‘Had he fled to the U.S. [from Nazi Germany in 1933], he would have been world famous today’. So ‘His publications deserve to be reprinted and translated’. This present book is an attempt to fulfil part of that wish by providing an outline of Baschwitz’s life and times, as well as summaries and brief excerpts from his half-dozen books, for English-language and international readers.

Throughout his life, Baschwitz was a defender of constitutional rule and law and order against authoritarianism, intimidation, and civil violence. This was especially true during the two World Wars and the Inter-War years, when those values were alternately assaulted by both the radical socialist or communist left, and by the radical nationalist or fascist right.

Three of his major dictums illustrate his stance. One: Mass delusions are best stopped by preserving freedom of expression (meaning critical discussion) at all times. Two: The most important part of a newspaper is formed by the mass of its readers (meaning a group of citizens), not by the institution itself. Three: Practical politics needs to rediscover (i.e., put trust in) the large mass of decent people if they are to stand up to tyrants. He wrote this in the 1920s and 1930s, when Europe and the rest of the world began to slide toward another major conflagration.