Gerth media

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Gerth Medien GmbH

logo
legal form GmbH
founding 1949
Seat Asslar , Germany
management
  • Detlef Holtgrefe
  • Marco Abrahms
  • Ulrich Eggers
Branch publishing company
Website www.gerth.de

Gerth Medien is a German Christian book and music publisher based in Asslar , founded in Wetzlar in 1949 and taken over by the Christian Media Foundation in 2016 . The aim of the publishing house “is to give people orientation, inspiration and help for a living faith as well as practical answers to life questions.” In addition to Christian books and music CDs, the publishing house also publishes the women's magazine Lydia .

history

HSW - Hermann Schulte, Wetzlar

In 1949 Hermann Schulte founded a Christian bookshop in Wetzlar . In 1956 he began producing Christian singles under the label Happy Message in the Song . In 1968, the novel Sturmwind by Allan Stewart was published by HSW - Hermann Schulte, Wetzlar . The first interpreters of the music label included the various choirs of the Evangelical Free Church of Derschlag , music producer and choir director Johannes Haas with the first youth for Christ choirs and his gospel quartet , the contralto-altist Renate Lüsse , tenor Franz Knies and organist Peter van Woerden . For the most part, the repertoire consisted of American revival songs . In 1961 the composer and music producer Margret Birkenfeld joined the publishing house and took over the management of the music department. In collaboration with Peter van Woerden, she initially published numerous episodes of the series Onkel Peters Kinderstunde in the children's sub-label Happy Message for Children . She later founded the in-house Wetzlar Gospel Choir and was responsible for the label's numerous publications as a music producer. At the beginning of the 1970s , Siegfried Fietz became the head music producer for publications in the sub-label Songs of the Happy Messages for contemporary Christian pop music , until a few years later he set up his own music publisher and label called Abakus .

The Christian Club

In March 1960, Hermann Schulte founded the record community Happy Message in the Song and offered members sound carriers as well as playback devices and radios such as the "Froboton" at reduced prices. At the end of the 1960s, the book program was also integrated into the range. With the change of the publisher's name, the club was renamed several times. First he changed his name to HSW-Club , with Klaus Gerth taking over the management to Schulte & Gerth Club and in the course of the merger of Schulte & Gerth with projection J to Gerth Medien, finally to Der christliche Club . The club now publishes its quarterly club magazine and has more than 20,000 members.

Schulte & Gerth

Due to an economic crisis campaigned Hermann Schulte the business economist Klaus Gerth , then as a manager at Beiersdorf marketing manager and authorized representative of the brand Juvena . Gerth joined the publishing house in 1975 as managing director and finally took it over in 1978 at Schulte's personal request, so that the company was renamed Verlag Schulte + Gerth . After successful economic restructuring, additional acquisitions followed in the next few years, such as the acquisition of Herold Verlag in 1985 , Memra Verlag in 1988 and Go for Records in 1993 . The Topic news service, founded in 1982, was sold in 1993. In 1995 the publisher took over the exclusive delivery of the music program from Janz Team Music . With the move to a new publishing house with an attached distribution warehouse in Aßlar-Berghausen , the publishing house moved away from Wetzlar in 1988. In 1992, the publisher's name was changed again to Verlag Klaus Gerth , although the Schulte & Gerth brand was retained for another decade.

The most important publications of this time include the novel series The Settlers by the Canadian writer Janette Oke and the adventure stories of the Five Siblings by Dieter B. Kabus . Both series were published by Günter Schmitz as an audio book or radio play. Musically significant publications of this time brought among others the Wir-singen-für-Jesus-Choirs , Margret Birkenfeld with her Wetzlarer Choirs, Johannes Haas with the Singing Circle Happy Message as well as the Gospel Quartet and young rock bands like Damaris Joy . With the change of management in the music department from Margret Birkenfeld to Jochen Rieger , choir projects such as Lebendige Psalmen with the Schulte & Gerth studio choir and increasingly instrumental productions found their way into the publishing program. The cantatas and oratorios by Klaus Heizmann, which can be stylistically assigned to classical pop, such as the series Die neue Kantate or the Jerusalem Oratorium from 1994 are also among the most important publications of the house. As the youth choir movement subsided, soloists and bands such as Beate Ling , Klemata , Layna , Andrea Adams-Frey and Sharona paved the way with the latest pop and rock music. The publisher initially maintained the music label S + G (LC 06160) for traditional and new sacred music for its different styles - the label In-Takt (LC 08250) has also been active for the latter - Kitty (LC 06161) for children's productions and Lord Records (LC 06162) for Christian pop music and gospel rock. In 2000, all labels expired in favor of the multi-disciplinary music label Schulte & Gerth (LC 00895).

Projection J

On January 1, 1996, Projektion J Verlag , based in Wiesbaden, was taken over by Verlag Klaus Gerth and continued as a parallel publishing branch alongside the established in-house brand Schulte & Gerth . In the new product line, the genre of worship and praise music imported from the USA and artists such as Albert Frey , Lothar Kosse and Arne Kopfermann as well as print literature of mostly charismatic stamps were marketed. Authors have included American writers such as Bill Hybels , John Ortberg , Robert Schuller , Lee Strobel , Frank E. Peretti , books such as Life With a Vision by Rick Warren , The Prayer of Jabez by Bruce Wilkinson, and the Finale book series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins or the Alpha course for believers.

Gerth media

In 1998 the publishing branches Schulte & Gerth and Projektion J were merged under the organizational umbrella of Gerth Medien , from 2003 the different music product lines of both publishers appeared under the joint music label Gerth Music (LC 12055). In 2005 both publishers merged to form Gerth Medien . The Gerth Music label was also replaced by the Gerth Medien label , which has been operating under the label code 13743 ever since.

In 2006 Gerth Medien became part of the Bertelsmann Group's international Random House publishing group . After Klaus Gerth left the company at the beginning of 2008, Ralf Markmeier, until then head of the Gütersloh publishing house , became the company's managing director. After he was given the management of the Gütersloh publishing house again in April 2014 , Stefan Wiesner became the publishing director for Gerth Medien and adeo in July 2015, while Ralf Markmeier acted as managing director until 2017. Marco Abrahms and Ulrich Eggers followed him in the management. Detlef Holtgrefe has been Publishing Director at Gerth Medien since September 2017.

adeo

In 2010 Gerth Medien founded a new brand with adeo . Prominent bestselling authors such as Patricia Kelly , Samuel Koch , Margot Käßmann and Martin Schleske as well as unknown authors publish their books here. In the spring of 2011, Margot Käßmann's book Sehnsucht nach Leben (Sehnsucht nach Leben) reached first place on the Spiegel bestseller list two weeks after it was published and remained in the top ten for 16 weeks.

In September 2017 Karoline Kuhn took over the program management of adeo Verlag.

Christian Media Foundation

On July 1, 2016, Gerth Medien and Adeo were taken over by the Christian Media Foundation . This is intended to secure the content and breadth of the offer.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. Gerth Medien - About us
  2. Verlag Gerth Medien celebrates 50 years of the book club ( Memento from June 19, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ), Christian media magazine Pro , January 29, 2010
  3. Gerth Music ( Memento of the original from September 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Music.ch  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.music.ch
  4. Ralf Mark Meier takes over operations at Gerth media , financial newspaper , September 24, 2007; Retrieved July 5, 2010
  5. Stefan Wiesner becomes adeo and Gerth Medien-Verlagsleiter , buchmarkt.de, announcement of June 9th, 2015.
  6. Ralf Markmeier takes over management of HarperCollins Germany , buchmarkt.de, article from November 9, 2017.
  7. Detlef Holtgrefe becomes publishing director of Gerth Medien , idea.de, message from June 1, 2017.
  8. Book report ( Memento of the original from December 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , April 2011  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.buchreport.de
  9. New program manager at adeo Verlag , boersenblatt.net, news from September 5, 2017.
  10. SCM buys Gerth Medien , pro-medienmagazin.de, news from June 3, 2016.

Web links