Katharina Gerlachin

Katharina Gerlachin (also Gerlach, b. c. 1520, d. 1592) was a German printer in Nuremberg. She acted as director of the Berg & Neuber printing house, founded c. 1542 by her husband Johann vom Berg and Ulrich Neuber, from 1564 until her death.

Born Katharina Bischoff, she married one Nicolas Schmid in 1536. She had a daughter named Katharina in 1539, and after her first husband's death in 1540, as Catherina Schmidin, she married Johann vom Berg in 1541. The birth of a daughter, Veronica, is recorded for 1545. After vom Berg's death in 1563 she married his junior partner Dietrich Gerlach (d. 1575). From 1564 until 1568, the company's prints appeared under the name of Gerlach & Neuber. In 1568, Neuber dissolved the partnership and opened his own shop. After her third husband's death in 1575, she continued to sign as printer until her death in 1592. Ownership of the printing workshop passed to her grandson Paul Kauffmann in 1601.

Her printing house is notable for producing numerous early music prints.

In 1582, she was sued by the Berg printers of Munich over copyright (in the terminology of the time, "privilege") of a work by Orlando di Lasso.[1]

References

1. Richard Hellmuth Baum, Wolfgang Rehm, Karl Vötterle, Musik und Verlag, Bärenreiter, 1968, p. 567.

• Susan Jackson, Berg and Neuber: Music Printers in Sixteenth Century Nuremberg, 2 vols, 1998.
• Susan Jackson, 'Who is Katherine? The Women of the Berg & Neuber - Gerlach - Kaufmann Printing Dynasty', Yearbook of the Alamire Foundation 2 (1995), 451-463.