Holtzbrinck

The German von Holtzbrinck group competes with Bertelsmann and like it has aggressively expanded into publishing in the US and UK over the past decade.

Georg von Holtzbrinck founded a small publishing house in in Stuttgart in 1948. It took off with development of Deutscher Bücherbund, the dominant German book club (sold in 1989) and subsequently acquired major German literary and technical publishers such as Samuel Fischer, Rowohlt, Droemer and Kindler.

Concurrently the group bought major national and regional newspapers such as Die Zeit and Handelsblatt. In the mid 1980's the company began expanding into English-speaking markets through US publishers such as Holt, with acquisition of a majority share in Macmillan in the mid 1990's. Holtzbrinck now controls all of Macmillan.

The group is family owned and is estimated to have sales of around US$2.5 billion.

A chronology of the group's development is here.

     Studies 

Macmillan was founded in 1843 by Daniel and Alexander Macmillan. Apart from publishing Charles Kingsley, Thomas Hughes, Lewis Carroll, Tennyson, Henry James, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, Lewis Namier, WB Yeats and JM Keynes the Macmillans were responsible for Nature (launched in 1869), the Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians (1877) and Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy (1899). The major study - very reverential - is Charles Morgan's The House of Macmillan, 1843-1943, With An Epilogue (Cambridge, Cambridge Uni Press 70).

There's been no major Elnglish-language study of Die Zeit or its founder Gerd Bucerius, a major owner of the Gruner & Jahr magazine group now controlled by Bertelsmann. (Ralf Dahrendorf's 2000 Liberal & unabhängig: Gerd Bucerius und seine Zeit has yet to be translated.) Editor Marion Donhoff's Before the Storm: Memoirs of my Youth in Old Prussia (New York, Knopf 90) is one of the finer accounts of life before Hitler.

     Holdings 

The group covers

Newspapers and magazines

Die Zeit

Tagesspiel

Handelsblatt

Handelsblatt am Abend

WirtschaftsWoche

DM

Teleborse

absatzwirtschaft

Der Betrieb

Der Finanzbetrieb

Cottbus Lausitzer Rundschau

Würzburg MAIN-POST

Saarbrücker Zeitung,

Constance Südkurier

Trierischer Volksfreund

Economia - Czech business publisher (56.5% stake with Dow Jones)

Wall Street Journal Europe (49% stake, 51% held by Dow Jones)

Convenience Shop

Regal

Spotlight

écoute

Ecos

adesso

Spot on

Junge Karriere

Corps (joint venture with Kohtes Klewes PR group)

VDI-Nachrichten - engineering publisher (40% stake)

Nature

Scientific American

Book Publishing

Macmillan

Heinemann

Picador

St Martin’s Press

Hill & Wang

North Point Press

Hanley & Belfus

S Fischer

Rowohlt

Kindler

Kiepenheuer & Witsch

Alexander Fest

Argon

Nicolai

Lichtenberg

Scherz

Augustus

Battenberg

Midena

Steiger

Barth

Wolfgang Kruger

Droemer Weltbild

Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Henry Holt

Coron Verlag

Schroedel-Schulbuchverlage

Moritz Diesterweg

College-Group

J.B. Metzler

Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger

Spektrum Akademischer Verlag

Urban & Fischer

Bedford

Freeman

Worth

Scientific American

Palgrave

Sidgwick & Jackson

Pan

Tor

Times Books (partnership with New York Times group)

Multimedia and Information Services

Genios

vwd-Vereinigte Wirtschaftsdienste - German business news agency (49.67% stake)

Infoseek Deutschland (25%)

Booxtra - German online bookseller (25%)

Television

n-tv German news channel (27.8% stake)

Other

Prognos - business research

Clausen & Bosse - printing

Franz Spiegel - printing

VHPS - book distribution

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