Christian Egenolff or Egenolph (26 July 1502 Hadamar

Hadamar

Hadamar is a small town in Limburg-Weilburg district in Hesse, Germany.Hadamar is known for its Clinic for Forensic Psychiatry/Centre for Social Psychiatry, lying at the edge of town, in whose outlying buildings is also found the Hadamar Memorial...

 - 9 February 1555 Frankfurt-am-Main) , also known as Christian Egenolff, the Elder, was the first important printer and publisher operating from Frankfurt-am-Main, and best-known for his Kräuterbuch and re-issue of books by Adam Ries

Adam Ries

Adam Ries was a German mathematician. He is also known by the name Adam Riese.- Life :Almost nothing is known about Ries' childhood, youth and education. It is not even possible to determine the year of his birth with certainty. The caption on the only known contemporary portrait of the...

, Erasmus von Rotterdam and Ulrich von Hutten

Ulrich von Hutten

Ulrich von Hutten was a German scholar, poet and reformer. He was an outspoken critic of the Roman Catholic Church and a bridge between the humanists and the Lutheran Reformation...

.

Egenolff studied humanities

Humanities

The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....

 at the University of Mainz from 1516, but later took up the trade of bookprinting in Strasbourg

Strasbourg

Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...

, working for Wolfgang Küpfel and marrying Margarethe Karpf. He left Strasbourg in 1530 and started business as a printer/publisher and typecasting

Movable type

Movable type is the system of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document ....

 in Frankfurt-am-Main. Here he published more than 400 books over the next 25 years. His publications were often illustrated by the Nuremberg artist Hans Sebald Beham

Hans Sebald Beham

Hans Sebald Beham was a German printmaker who did his best work as an engraver, and was also a designer of woodcuts and a painter and miniaturist...

 and Virgil Solis

Virgil Solis

Virgil Solis or Virgilius Solis , a member of a prolific family of artists, was a German draughtsman and printmaker in engraving, etching and woodcut who worked in Nuremberg. His prints were sold separately or formed the illustrations of books; many prints signed by him are probably by assistants...

. Egenolff worked with Jacques Sabon

Jacques Sabon

Jacques Sabon was a French typefounder. He worked with Christian Egenolff in Frankfurt in 1555 and Christophe Plantin of Antwerp in 1565. He is associated with the forms of roman type which were being developed by Claude Garamond and others...

 in developing new fonts.

In October 1533 Egenolff was sued by Johann Schott, a noted Strasbourg publisher, for infringement of copyright on Herbarium Vivae Icones, illustrated by Hans Weiditz

Hans Weiditz

Hans Weiditz the Younger, Hans Weiditz der Jüngere, Hans Weiditz II , was a German Renaissance artist, also known as The Petrarch Master for his woodcuts illustrating Petrarch's De remediis utriusque fortunae, or Remedies for Both Good and Bad Fortune, or Phisicke Against Fortune...

 and compiled and annotated by Otto Brunfels

Otto Brunfels

Otto Brunfels was a German theologian and botanist...

. Egenolff in his defense, argued that nature could not be copyrighted and that plants stood as communal models for any artist.

In 1535 he printed the German Bible and his own compilation of Chronica. In the following years Egenolff published works by prominent authors such as Hans Sachs

Hans Sachs

Hans Sachs was a German meistersinger , poet, playwright and shoemaker.-Biography:Hans Sachs was born in Nuremberg . His father was a tailor. He attended Latin school in Nuremberg...

, Johann Eichmann aka Johann Dryander (1500-1560), Sebastian Münster

Sebastian Münster

Sebastian Münster , was a German cartographer, cosmographer, and a Hebrew scholar.- Life :Münster was born at Ingelheim near Mainz, the son of Andreas Munster. He completed his studies at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen in 1518. His graduate adviser was Johannes Stöffler.He was appointed to...

, Philipp Melanchthon

Philipp Melanchthon

Philipp Melanchthon , born Philipp Schwartzerdt, was a German reformer, collaborator with Martin Luther, the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation, intellectual leader of the Lutheran Reformation, and an influential designer of educational systems...

 and Sebastian Franck

Sebastian Franck

Sebastian Franck was a 16th century German freethinker, humanist, and radical reformer.Franck was born about 1499 at Donauwörth, Bavaria. Because of this he styled himself Franck von Word...

.

His daughter, Magdalena Egenolff, married Adam Lonicer

Adam Lonicer

Adam Lonicer, Adam Lonitzer or Adamus Lonicerus was a German botanist, noted for his 1557 revised version of Eucharius Rösslin’s herbal....

, one of Egenolff's employees. Lonicer became a director of the firm after Egenolff's death, publishing no fewer than four editions of the Kräuterbuch between 1557 and 1577. Egenolff's widow, Margarethe, carried on the business until 1572 and afterwards his children until 1602.

He was buried in the Peterskirchhof in Frankfurt.