Johann Froben
Johann Froben (Latin: Johannes Frobenius; * ca. 1460 in Hammelburg, Franconia, † 27 October 1527 in Basel) was a famous printer and publisher in Basel.
After completing his university career at Basel, where he made the acquaintance of the famous printer Johann Amerbach (approx. 1440-1513), he established a printing house in that city about 1491, and this soon attained a European reputation for accuracy and for taste. In 1500 he married the daughter of the bookseller Wolfgang Lachner, who entered into a partnership with him.
He was on terms of friendship with Erasmus, who not only had his own works printed by him, but superintended Frobenius' editions of Jerome, Cyprian, Tertullian, Hilary of Poitiers and Ambrose. His printing of Erasmus' Novum Testamentum (1519) was used by Martin Luther for his translation.
Frobenius employed Hans Holbein the Younger to illuminate his texts. It was part of his plan to print editions of the Greek Fathers. He did not, however, live to carry out this project, but it was very creditably executed by his son Hieronymus Froben and his son-in-law Nikolaus Episcopius. Frobenius died in October 1527.
His work in Basel made that city in the 16th century the leading center of the German book trade. An extant letter of Erasmus, written in the year of Frobenius' death, gives an epitome of his life and an estimate of his character; and in it Erasmus mentions that his grief for the death of his friend was far more poignant than that which he had felt for the loss of his own brother, adding that all the apostles of science ought to wear mourning. The epistle concludes with an epitaph in Greek and Latin.
References
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Joannes Froben". [[Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition|Encyclopædia Britannica]] (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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