Johannes (Hans) Grüninger (1455–1533) was a German printer whose career spanned from 1482 to 1533 and produced up to 500 publications. Grüninger was one of the single most prolific printers of Strasbourg, printing up to 80 books a year. While a great deal of his publications were Catholic, he managed to print a great variety of works ranging from humanist to scientific texts. His work was fairly equally representative of both Latin and the vernacular; about 39% of his works were printed in Latin and the remaining 61% in German.
Grüninger was born as Johannes Reinhart in 1455 in the town of Markgröningen, Württemberg (from which he took his name "Grüninger"). He learned about the printing trade in Basel before he moved to Strasbourg which was experiencing a boom in the printing industry. Between 1508 and 1528 about 70 printers had established themselves in Strasbourg. Grüninger had a head start on this competition and in 1481 he moved to Strasbourg. A year later bought his print shop and in August 1483, he printed his first book, Petrus Comestor's Historia Scholastica. Some of his notable publications include a German-language Bible, and illustrated editions of Horace's Opera, and Virgil's Aeneid. Grüninger died in 1532 and was succeeded by his sons Wolfgang and Bartholomew (primarily Bartholomew, who was also a printer albeit on a smaller scale than his father). As was common, his sons promptly sold the business to Peter Schöffer the younger in 1533 after being unable to maintain past production rates.
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