1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Eltville

ELTVILLE (Elfeld), a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau, on the right bank of the Rhine, 5 m. S.W. from Wiesbaden, on the railway Frankfort-on-Main-Cologne, and with a branch to Schlangenbad. Pop. 3700. It has a Roman Catholic and a Protestant church, ruins of a feudal castle, a Latin school, and a monument to Gutenberg. It has a considerable trade in the wines of the district and two manufactories of sparkling wines. Eltville (originally Adeldvile, Lat. Altavilla) is first mentioned in a record of the year 882. It was given by the emperor Otto I. to the archbishops of Mainz, who often resided here. It received town rights in 1331 and was a place of importance during the middle ages. In 1465 Gutenberg set up his press at Eltville, under the patronage of Archbishop Adolphus of Nassau, shortly afterwards handing over its use to the brothers Heinrich and Nikolaus Bechtermünz. Several costly early examples of printed books issued by this press survive, the earliest being the Vocabularium Latino-Teutonicum, first printed in 1467.