It is not known where the Gensfleisch family took refuge. It is supposed that Strasburg was the city selected, for this is the city in which we find the earliest notice of Gutenberg.
In 1430, the Elector Conrad iii granted a full amnesty to many of the exiled citizens of Mentz, and summoned them to return. Johan Gutenberg was specifically named in the proclamation, but he continued to dwell abroad. During this year, his mother Else, then a widow, negotiated, through her son, for her pension of fourteen guilders which had been allowed to her by the magistrates of Mentz. In 1432, he visited Mentz, probably on business relating to this pension. These are the only known records of his early manhood.
Nothing is known about his education. Some writers have represented him as an engraver on wood or a printer of cards or of block-books at an early age. It is possible that he may have received instruction in the arts of block-printing and engraving, and that he may have traveled far and wide in quest of greater knowledge,[1] as was and is customary with German artisans; but we have no evidence on this point. It must be confessed that the first thirty years of his life are virtually blank.
The most important actions of his after life would have been obscured quite as thoroughly, if it had not been his fate to appear many times, either as complainant or defendant, before the courts of his country. It is from the records of these courts that we glean the story of his life. He first appears as complainant in a suit at law which shows his high
- ↑ Charles Winaricky, a learned Bohemian, wrote a dissertation on the birthplace of Gutenberg—Jean Guttenbergy né en 1412 a Kuttenberg en Bohème, 12mo. Brussels, 1847—in which he tried to prove: that Gutenberg was born in the year 1412, in the town of Kuttenberg in Bohemia, from which town he derived his name ; that he was a graduate of the university of Prague; that he acquired his knowledge of metallurgy from the metal workers of that old mining town; and that his proficiency in many curious arts was the result of his Bohemian education. Winaricky's book abounds with curious information, but his reasoning is largely based on conjecture. It cannot be used to dis credit the positive dates and facts of many German records.
