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Updated: April 30, 2025
And he talked to the Frau Gensfleisch upon the matter, and though he did not think it right to tell her that her son might one day become a great and learned man, yet he persuaded her that it would be wrong to oppose the earnest wishes of Hans who had always been a good, and dutiful, and loving son; and so it was settled between them that henceforth a part of the widow's savings were to pay for the labor which was required for the field and garden, and that Hans was to come to the convent every day to be taught by the monks to read and write.
The father of Hans had been a dyer, and had at one time carried on rather a thriving business in Mainz; but after his death Frau Gensfleisch had gone with her son to live at a little village called Steinheim, about three miles from the city walls, where, on a few acres of land, bought with her husband's savings, and laid out partly as garden, and partly as field and vineyard, she contrived to live with this, her only child.
If so, we will tell them something of the life of Hans Gensfleisch, the only son of a poor widow, who lived about the beginning of the fifteenth century, not far from Mainz, or Mayence, a city built on the banks of the river Rhine, about half-way between its source and the sea.
"The Frau Gensfleisch," said the woman; "nay, my good friend, the Frau Gensfleisch has left our village this many a day. Maybe she lives now in the town, or maybe she is dead; I cannot tell thee which." The traveller turned away. Frau Gensfleisch, however, was not dead.
A stone wall supplied the place of the old briar-hedge, and shrubs had grown up into trees, shadowing the door and window, whilst moss and ivy covered the walls and roof. With a trembling hand he knocked at the lowly door. The lattice was opened, and a strange face came to answer his inquiries. "Does not the Frau Gensfleisch live here?" asked the stranger with a faltering voice.
Frau Gensfleisch listened in wonder, but wonder was lost in hope, for she said to herself, "This man has known my Hans, for he too could imprint letters;" and she eagerly inquired his name. Father Gottlieb said that the name of the stranger was Johann Gutenberg, and that he was tall and dark, and spoke with a northern tongue.
Out of the letters which formed Hans Gensfleisch, for instance, he could make the word fisch which is the German for fish lang, long schein, shine; and it was a great delight to his mother as well as to himself, when he found too that he could put together the letters of her name, Lischen, just as they were also written on the parchment register of his birth.
One thing alone displeased her, which was that he should have adopted a name different from that by which he had been known in childhood, but when he told her of the ridicule which had followed him wherever he went, when his strange name of Gensfleisch was heard, she was reconciled; especially when he reminded her too, that the name which he had taken, was one which belonged to his family and to which he had some claim; and when in future she would hear her son called by his name of Gutenberg, and was told that that name was become known not only all over Germany, but in strange and distant lands, she would say, "Yes, Gutenberg it soundeth well.
And happy indeed was Frau Gensfleisch, and she needed no promises from her son to assure her of the joy and comfort which his care would secure her for the few remaining years of her life.
Grieved was he indeed to tell her all that had befallen; how that he had shed the blood of a fellow creature, and that he must leave her, when to return he knew not. Frau Gensfleisch wept long and sore. She knew not what she should do without her Hans. It was like tearing the life from out her body, she said. Old as she was, who could tell that she should ever see him again.
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