Böhlau Verlag is a book and magazine publisher predominantly of humanities and social science disciplines, based in
Vienna
Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...
(Böhlau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG) and
Cologne
Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...
(Böhlau Verlag GmbH & Cie.), with a branch in
Weimar
Weimar is a city in the state (Germany), German state of Thuringia, in Central Germany (cultural area), Central Germany between Erfurt to the west and Jena to the east, southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together w ...
. They describe their focus as being "from the historically oriented humanities". The publishing house was an independent and privately owned media corporation until it was acquired by
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht in 2017.
Company history
In 1853 the bookseller Hermann Böhlau (1826–1900) founded the publishing house, which would become known for its legal, linguistic and literary-historical works. Its output included
Goethe
Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...
's collected works in 143 volumes (1887–1919). This book series was officially known as ''Goethes Werke'' and commonly referred to as the Weimar Ausgabe (WA) of
Goethe
Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...
's works and as the "Sophien Edition", having been named after the patron
Grand Duchess Sophie of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, the wife of Grand Duke Carl Alexander.
In 1883 the publishing firm launched an authoritative edition of the works of
Martin Luther
Martin Luther ( ; ; 10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, Theology, theologian, author, hymnwriter, professor, and former Order of Saint Augustine, Augustinian friar. Luther was the seminal figure of the Reformation, Pr ...
, officially known as ''
D. Martin Luthers Werke: kritische Gesammtausgabe'' and commonly known as the Weimarer Ausgabe (WA) (
Weimar Edition of Luther's works).
The firm also published the (Journal for Historical Jurisprudence) which had been founded in 1815 by the jurist
Friedrich Carl von Savigny and others, and which still appears today under the title (Journal of the Savigny Foundation for Legal History).
Soon after Böhlau's death in 1900, the publishing house was renamed Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger (Hermann Böhlau's Successors).
In 1924, during the global economic crisis of the 1920s, one of the publisher's authors, the legal scholar Professor (1880–1953), first took over the firm's ''Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte'' (Journal for Legal History) and then the entire publishing house. After the end of the Second World War, Rauch founded a new publishing house in Marburg in 1947, which he named Böhlau Verlag in 1951. In 1957 the company was relocated to Cologne. Another publishing house of the same name was founded in Graz and later moved to Vienna.
Despite the division of Germany and the founding of the
German Democratic Republic
East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...
, the parent company in
Weimar
Weimar is a city in the state (Germany), German state of Thuringia, in Central Germany (cultural area), Central Germany between Erfurt to the west and Jena to the east, southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together w ...
, located in the
Soviet occupation zone of Germany, remained as a privately run publishing house. The manager and limited partner
Leiva Petersen (1912–1992) received a personal operating license in 1946 and became personally liable partner of the Weimar publishing house in 1947 with the consent of Karl Rauch. Despite adverse conditions, Petersen managed to maintain the high scientific level for decades. The publishing output included large multivolume editions such as the
Schiller-Nationalausgabe (Schiller National Edition), the Goethe series, Luther-Gesamtausgabe (Luther complete edition), and the firm's renowned yearbooks, such as the Shakespeare-Jahrbuch and the Hanse-Jahrbuch. In addition, the firm's publishing programme expanded to include historical, art and cultural history literature. Within the framework of what was politically feasible, business contacts continued to exist between the firm in East Germany and the West German Böhlau Verlag.
However, as a private company in the socialist country was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain over time, Leiva Petersen decided in 1978 to sell the publishing house Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger in Weimar to the
Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR (Academy of Sciences of the GDR). The Rauch family agreed to the takeover in 1979. Petersen managed the publishing house until 1983.
Following the end of the German Democratic Republic in 1989, the Böhlau Verlag in Cologne and Vienna tried unsuccessfully to reverse this sale.
[Michael Knoche]
Der letzte Deal der DDR, Der Böhlau-Verlag Weimar wird verkauft
Aus der Forschungsbibliothek Krekelborn, hypotheses.org, 5 October 2020, updated 28 June 2021. Retrieved 22 October 2022. In 1998 Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger was taken over by the publisher
J. B. Metzler, who belonged to the Georg von Holtzbrinck publishing group. On June 30, 2002, the publishing house in Weimar was closed. Since then, the publisher has only existed as an imprint at J. B. Metzler, which in turn was acquired by
Springer Nature
Springer Nature or the Springer Nature Group is a German-British academic publishing company created by the May 2015 merger of Springer Science+Business Media and Holtzbrinck Publishing Group's Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan, and Macm ...
in 2015.
Böhlau Verlag in Cologne and Vienna opened their own branch in Weimar in 1990 and after 1998 took over a number of book series from Verlag Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger.
Publishing program
The current program of the Böhlau Verlag includes publications from the field of history (including cultural, art and legal history) as well as literature and linguistics. Examples of serial works are the Werte der deutschen Heimat (Values of the German Homeland), Rheinisches Archiv (Rhenish Archive), Forum Ibero-Americanum, Beiträge zur historischen Bildungsforschung (Contributions to Historical Educational Research), Osteuropa-Handbücher (Eastern Europe Handbooks), Anglistische Studien (English Studies) and several series of dissertations.
There are also journals such as the Archiv für Diplomatik ("archive for diplomacy"), the Archiv für Kulturgeschichte ("archive for cultural history"), the Internationale Zeitschrift für Kommunikationsforschung ("international journal for communication research") and the Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch ("German Dante yearbook").
Since 2001, Böhlau has been one of the partner publishers of the academic and scientific publishing body, Uni-Taschenbücher-Verlag ("university paperback publisher") (UTB).
References
Attribution
* Some of the text in this article is translated from the
Böhlau Verlag page on German Wikipedia.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bohlau Verlag
Publishing companies of Austria
Publishing companies of Germany
2017 mergers and acquisitions