Only in the beginning were my personal services especially necessary.
Later, as the workmen grew equal to their tasks, I found more and more
leisure for dedicating myself to inventing improvements. I was rather
fortunate in this endeavor, and the various processes invented since
1809 would now be generally known through the publication of many
interesting works, had Freiherr von Aretin not been forced to leave
Munich to assume his new duties in the Royal Service. This left my art
without his assistance, and our partnership reached its end just as it
was beginning to attain fruit. My own circumstances did not permit me to
continue the establishment on its former scale; therefore, Freiherr von
Aretin turned over part of it, especially the art-branches, to von
Manlich, the Director of the Royal Gallery, and another part to Herr
Zeller. The latter soon gave up the printing business as incompatible
with his other interests, but he did a great deal for domestic art and
industry later by opening a warehouse for its products, also by
publishing a paper and issuing many lithographic art productions.
I kept one or two presses for myself, and as I married the daughter of
the Royal Chief Auditor Versch in January, 1810, I hoped to teach my
wife to manage a small business. In the very beginning I obtained a
large order for passports from the Royal Commission of the Isar, which
kept the presses busy for a month. At the same time I contracted with
the Royal War Economy Council to furnish all their printing. Besides
this, I had many orders from another Royal Commission and from Herr
Falter, so that my little establishment was very busy. Unfortunately it
happened that I was not paid at once by the Royal Commission of the
Isar, but only after four years. Added to this, after some months I had
to support my workmen in idleness for several weeks, because there
happened to be no work for them. This gave my wife so ill an idea of the
business that she kept at me till I promised her to give up the whole
thing.
Madame Gleissner was not so timid. She offered to take over my men if I
would turn over to her the government work that I had. At first she did
very well, because just then orders came from many directions. She might
have made a great success, had her husband not been stricken with
paralysis, which rendered him so miserable that at last he lost his
mind. Then came the ever-growing competition and at last the government
bureau installed its own plant. Her daughter lost her eyesight almost
wholly at this time, so that the family fell into a woeful condition,
which would be still worse now if they were not sustained by faith in
the mercy and grace of our best of kings, who will surely reward their
efforts for lithography, which art, according to the belief of all
experts, will ever remain a beautiful flower in the shining wreath of
the noble Maximilian.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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