Johann Heinrich Zedler
Wolf provided funding for Zedler to continue with the Universal Lexicon and other works he had already begun such as the General Chronicle of States, Wars, Churches and Scholarship (1733–1754, 22 volumes).
Johann Heinrich Zedler was born in 1706 in Breslau, the son of a shoemaker, and presumably did not have higher secondary education – if he attended school at all.
[8] Early in 1728 Zedler published a notice of "A new enlarged and revised edition of all the German journals and Works of the Blessed Luther".
[9] Unlike the previous work by theologian Johann Gottlieb Pfeiffer, Zedler's book did not follow a chronological sequence, but organized the material around themes.
Thomas Fritsch had published the General Historical Lexicon in 1709, the German-language equivalent of Le Grand Dictionnaire historique of Louis Moréri, a multi-volume project with contributions from specialist writers and scientists.
These national privileges typically covered a period of five to ten years, and gave the original printer protection against foreign reprints during this time.
Zedler could rely on the support of Jacob August Franckenstein, a professor of natural and international law at the University of Leipzig, and was a friend of the publisher of New Learned Works, Johann Burckhardt Mencke.
On 24 October 1730, Zedler sent the Council of the City of Leipzig a preprint of the proposed title page, but this time without the privilege claim.
Again, the local publishers protested, and the Leipzig Book Commission finally ordered Zedler to halt printing of the Universal Lexicon and the Chronicle and to stop advertising these works.
Ulrich Johannes Schneider, an expert on Zedler and director of the Leipzig University Library, says that anonymity – at least at this early stage of the enterprise – was a deliberate strategy.
The two men talk of the injustices of the book trade, allege that Zedler engaged in sharp practices and fraud, say that he lacks finance and accuse his authors of stupidity.
On 10 March 1732 the court asked for a new report from the Leipzig Book Commission, which responded with an 87-page list of allegations of plagiarism from Zedler's opponents.
In February Zedler launched a monthly paperback magazine called Open Cabinet of Great Men, or the current status of all kingdoms and countries of the world.
It was a success, publishing 25 editions up to 1735, but, according to Zedler's biographer Gerd Quedenbaum, in the long run it was not a remarkable source of revenue.
[26] In mid-April, Zedler announced a new publication in a newspaper advertisement, a Latin-Greek-German lexicon by Andreas Reyher and Christian Juncker, edited by Johann Matthias Gesner.
On 5 October the Halle bookseller Johann Gottfried Oertel offered a catalog of books from Zedler for the upcoming Leipzig Michaelmas fair at discounts of up to 50%.
But a few months later he faced competition from the Leipzig publisher Moritz Georg Weidmann with a competing magazine on news of the European states.
At the end of 1734 he ran ads for a magazine project called News worth reading for the city and the new University of Göttingen, but it probably was never published.
Quedenbaum concludes that at this time Zedler was in such great financial distress was that he wanted to sell his stock of book at any price.
Albrecht Kirchhoff in his 1892 book reproduced a report dated 10 October 1738 from the Council of the City of Leipzig to the government in Dresden on the subject.
[35] Modern biographical works such as the 2003 article by Winfried Müller in Saxon biography avoid the problem by not discussing the exact date and circumstances of Zedler's financial collapse in detail.
[37] Quedenbaum thought Wolf took over further funding of Zedler because he was right in the target audience of the Universal Lexicon, and believed in continuing the work rather than in letting it cease.
Quedenbaum considers this unlikely and suggests that the withdrawal of the imperial printing privilege was due to the influence of the book printer and publisher Johann Ernst Schultze, of the Bavarian court.
To this end, he sent the imperial notary Bernhard Christian Groot from Offenbach with two journeymen printers as witnesses to the Leipzig Book Commission.
In a letter dated 10 October 1738 the council explained their decision to the State Government in Dresden, rejecting the validity of Groot's imperial authority to publish in the city.
Zedler was increasingly marginalized after the financial takeover of his publishing house by Wolf, and after Carl Günther Ludovici took over the direction of the 19th and subsequent volumes of the Universal Lexicon.
[43] Zedler seems to have also given up his own bookstore, because an advertisement for the Easter Fair of 1739, published in the New Learned Papers, said that the two most recent encyclopedia volumes were available from "Wolf's vault, Auerbach court".
[45] Quedenbaum characterized Zedler as "impetuous", and suggested that he retired to peace in Wolfshain in order to plan new publishing projects.
[48] Zedler's next publishing project was the Corpus Juris Cambialis (Stock Exchange Laws) of Johann Gottlieb Siegel.
The basis for Heinsius's Historical and Political-Geographic Atlas of the whole world was a translation of the Grand Dictionnaire Géographique Et Critique of Antoine-Augustin Bruzen de La Martinière.
