Albrecht Pfister c.1420 - c.1466
Pfister is an even more shadowy figure than Johann Gutenberg, and what is known of him comes from analysis of the nine editions he is generally thought to have printed. Trained as a cleric, he worked in Bamberg, Germany, and by 1460 he was acting as secretary to the prince-bishop of the city. As a printer he is credited with being responsible for two innovations in the use of the new technology: printing books in the German language, and printing woodcut illustrations at the same time as the type. He produced the first printed editions of popular German stories, Der Ackermann aus Boehmen, a poetic dialogue between the 'Ploughman' and 'Death' who has deprived him of his young wife, and a collection of fables entitled Der Edelstein. The John Rylands Library holds the only complete examples in Britain of books printed by Pfister, including his Historie von Joseph, Daniel, Judith und Esther and the Biblia Pauperum of 1462.