Ulrich Zell

Ulrich Zell ( * probably in Hanau, † probably shortly after 31 August 1507) was the first printer in Cologne.

Life

Ulrich Zell was born in Hanau, his date of birth is unknown. Printing he learned in all likelihood, as the similarity of the pressure types suggests in Mainz at Schoeffer Peter and John Fust. Probably he left Mainz, like many others, in 1462 broke placed after the capture of the city by Adolf of Nassau, commerce and trade.

His first occupied pressure, Liber Johannis Chrysostomi super psalmo quinquagesimo, dates from the year 1466; is very likely that he much earlier, possibly already in 1462, opened a Offizin in Cologne. Documented he is mentioned first in Cologne on 17 June 1464 when he left to go on the matriculation of the university.

As cell is called a clericus Diocesis Moguntinensis in the mentioned Chrysostom - pressure, it is assumed that he had gone under the protection of the clergy; he did not show up in lists and in the citizens of the guild and was called in later years in his colophon, the (also called Explicit ) colophon of the prints, a Civis Coloniensis.

1471 he married the Cologne patrician Katharina Spangenberg; from the marriage was a son, John, out. Zell's date of death is like the birth unknown; the last document of his life comes from the year 1507.

Work

Nine different prints by Ulrich cell are occupied by notice in the colophon. On the basis of typographical comparing one is convinced that from his press far more prints emerged; justified assumption is less than its up to 120 prints.

This assumption is also supported by the fact that Ulrich Zell was on business very successful. So he bought a house in 1471 Birklin with yard in the quarter Lyskirchen and 1473 the lying next to this apartment Ritter seat of the family of Lyskirchen. Apparently he had also his Offizin because he was in his character to printer apud Lyskirchen. Busy is yet another number of houses and lands, the cell had in the subsequent period.

Since Ulrich Zell's, was living and working space from the university and ecclesiastical center of Cologne, where he had his heel away, he taught there in 1478 a branch, which was the sale of its printing works which he retained until 1493 and then sold. Documentary evidence are also quite a number of business negotiations with the church in Lyskirchen.

Ulrich Zell printed mainly in fourths and folio format in which he delivered the professors and the University of Cologne textbooks, especially theological literature. In the last decade of the 15th century came, partly in collaboration with Johann Koelhoff the Younger, also vernacular works added, apparently for economic reasons, as the competition became stronger at the Cologne book market. Last Zell's prints are dated with the year 1502.