The Evangelische Verlagsanstalt (EVA) is a denominational media company founded in Berlin in 1946. Its shareholders are the and the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Saxony. The managing director is Sebastian Knöfel.

Book publisher

The range includes numerous theological-scientific publications, religious education, congregational literature including calendars as well as Christian

Belles-lettres is a category of writing, originally meaning beautiful or fine writing. In the modern narrow sense, it is a label for literary works that do not fall into the major categories such as fiction, poetry, or drama. The phrase is sometimes used pejora ...

with a focus on biographies and stories.

Newspapers and magazines

The EVA publishes, among others, the ', the ', the ''Berliner Theologische Zeitschrift'' and the ' (formerly ''Die Christenlehre'').

Private radio

The Evangelische Verlagsanstalt GmbH is a shareholder in

commercial broadcasting Commercial broadcasting (also called private broadcasting) is the broadcasting of television programs and radio programming by privately owned corporate media, as opposed to state sponsorship. It was the United States′ first model of radio (an ...

. In addition, female employees of the Evangelische Verlagsanstalt work as church radio editors in the Saxon broadcasters and .

History 1946–1989

Under the licence number 54 of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany, the Evangelische Verlagsanstalt GmbH was founded in 1946 with headquarters in Berlin; in 1953 a publishing department in Leipzig was added. The first publishing director was the later Friedrich Bartsch. The first publication, the Christmas Carol book ''Ihr Kinderlein kommet'', was immediately out of print despite a considerable initial print run of 28,000 copies. In the following years, the number of publications rose steadily, so that the publishing house eventually became the largest Protestant publishing house in Germany. Under the umbrella of the EVA, those private Protestant publishers in the

GDR East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

who had not received their own licence also published; the publishing profile was accordingly broad: from scientific theology to congregational literature, Christian fiction to Christian devotional literature and Christian calendars. Some classics are still published today, for example the ''Kirchliche Amtskalender'' or the daily ''Sonne und Schild''. Every book had to go through the procedure of censorship in East Germany before it was published: from appraisals by state censors to discussions with the publisher, sometimes lasting months or even years, to state paper allocation.

History since 1989

With the

Peaceful Revolution The Peaceful Revolution (german: Friedliche Revolution), as a part of the Revolutions of 1989, was the process of sociopolitical change that led to the opening of East Germany's borders with the West, the end of the ruling of the Socialist Unity ...

and the

German reunification German reunification (german: link=no, Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process of re-establishing Germany as a united and fully sovereign state, which took place between 2 May 1989 and 15 March 1991. The day of 3 October 1990 when the Ge ...

, the situation of EVA also changed fundamentally. After a change of shareholders, the publishing seat was moved to Leipzig in 1991. With effect from 1 January 2010, Hansisches Druck- und Verlagshaus GmbH Frankfurt (HDV) took over the majority of shares in Evangelische Verlagsanstalt GmbH Leipzig (EVA) from the previous sole shareholder, the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Saxony (EvLKS). The EvLKS remains a shareholder in the publishing house and is the sole shareholder of Evangelisches Medienhaus GmbH Leipzig, which bundles the publishing activities of the Saxon regional church. By the time of its 60th anniversary in 2006, around 11,000 titles had been published with a total circulation of around 150 million copies. The publishing house is an institutional member of the Forum Thomanum.''Mitglied werden.''
In ''forum-thomanum.de,'' retrieved 25 March 2021.

References

External links

* {{portal bar, Media, religion, Germany Book publishing companies of Germany Companies based in Leipzig German companies established in 1946