Der Buchdrucker Maria Theresias. Johann Thomas Trattner (1719–1798) und sein Mediumimperium ed. by Christoph Augustynowicz and Johannes Frimmel (review)

This collection comprising an introduction and nine papers from a conference held at the Institute for East European History at the University of Vienna in December 2017 will be of particular interest to book historians concerned with the trade in central Europe in the late eighteenth century. Marking the tercentenary of the birth of Johann Thomas Trattner, it celebrates his role as publisher and bookseller during the reign of Empress Maria Theresia (lived 1717–80) and examines the question of how he benefited from her protection. Though of humble origins in Hungary and following an apprenticeship in the book trade which began in 1735, Trattner was to became the most important publisher in Vienna during the second half of the eighteenth century—envious contemporaries claimed he possessed 'the finest house, the most beautiful wife, and the greatest bookshop in Europe'.

This is far from being the first study of him—other notable ones have included Ursula Giese's 'Johan Thomas Edler von Trattner. Seine Bedeutung als Buchdrucker, Buchhändler und Herausgeber', Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens, 3 (1961), cols 1013–1454, Reinhard Wittmann's essay 'Der gerechtfertigte Nachdrucker? Nachdruck und literarisches Leben im 18. Jahrhundert', in his Buchmarkt und Lektüre im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1982), and Mark Lehmstedt's '"Ein Strohm, der alles überschwemmt"—Dokumente zum Verhältnis von Philipp Erasmus Reich und Johann Thomas von Trattner. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Nachdrucks in Deutschland im 18. Jahrhundert, Bibliothek und Wissenschaft, 25 (1991), 176–267, to name just three. The present volume opens with Johannes Frimmel's succinct account of Trattner's life and businesses: in Vienna he had a printing works with as many as thirty-four presses, a bindery, a type-foundry, and later a paper-mill. Elsewhere, during the course of his career, he ran eight bookshops (in Brno, Graz, Innsbruck, Pest, Prague, Trieste, Warsaw, and Zagreb) and five printing shops (in Innsbruck, Linz, Pest, Trieste, and Zagreb) and also had various depots in places such as Bratislava, Frankfurt am Main, Graz, Hermannstadt (Sibiu), Klagenfurt, Lemberg (Lviv), Lubljana, Olmütz (Olomouc), Timisoara, and Troppau. The scene having been set, there follows a most useful account by Peter Eigner of the overall situation of the book trade in eighteenth-century Vienna. It was marked by a tussle between the state and the university for control of the trade. Censorship and freedom of the press was another major issue. Then there was the problem of unauthorized reprints, a phenomenon with which Trattner's name is always intimately linked. This was also a period when the reading public expanded considerably, which in turn led to new methods of book distribution. Philipp Hofender discusses the implications of the nature of the Habsburg monarchy as a multilingual and plurinational entity for communications, culture, and publishing. Giulia Delogu, who suffers the misfortune of having her name consistently misspelt as 'Guilia' in the table of contents and in the running headings of pages 40–52, focuses (in her essay written in English) on Trattner's important contribution to the commercial and cultural life (especially in the theatre) of the free port of Trieste and the surrounding area after he established a business there in 1756. Judit Vizkelety-Ecsedy provides a well-informed and well-illustrated survey of Trattner's and several of his relatives' links with the book trade in Hungary: in Bratislava (now in Slovakia), Pest and Timisoara (now in Romania), with depots in several other towns too. Less immediately concerned with Trattner himself is Christoph Augustynowicz's account of the book trade in eighteenth-century Lviv (Lemberg) in the Ukraine. The university there had a significant library, though one contemporary opined that the theological books would serve a...