Johann Samuel Heinsius

Who was Johann Samuel Heinsius?

Johann Samuel Heinsius was a German bookseller and publisher based in Leipzig, best known for the works he published in collaboration with Johann Heinrich Zedler.

Heinsius founded his firm, also named Heinsius, in Leipzig in 1725. After Zedler, publisher of the Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon, had lost control of his firm to Johann Heinrich Wolf around 1735, he became interested in new projects and began to collaborate with Heinsius. In 1740, a number of Zedler's products appeared under the Heinsius name, starting with a relaunch of Zedler's Cabinet magazine, under a slightly altered title. It is not known how successful the new magazine was, or why Heinsius included it in his publishing program since from 1739 he already had a similar monthly magazine under the title of Genealogical and historical messages of the principal events of the European courts.

In 1741, there followed the first volume of the General Treasure Chamber, a four-volume commercial lexicon translated by Carl Günther Ludovici from the Dictionnaire Universel de Commerce by Jacques Savary des Brûlons. The partners' next publishing project was the Corpus Juris Cambialis of Johann Gottlieb Siegel.