Brunnen Verlag (Giessen)
| Brunnen Verlag
|
|
|---|---|
 |
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| legal form | GmbH |
| founding | 1919 |
| Seat | to water |
| management | Peter Butenuth, managing director |
| Branch | Book publisher |
| Website | www.brunnen-verlag.de |
The Brunnen Verlag is a Christian publishing house based in Gießen in the district of Gießen in Hesse . Alongside the Bible Societies, it is one of the largest Bible distributors in German-speaking countries and has been located in Giessen's Gottlieb-Daimler-Strasse since 1981.
history
Founding of the publishing house
The history of the fountain publishing begins almost 80 years before the official anniversary on September 1, 1919. In 1840 the then called "Secretary" Managing Director of " Christianity Society ", Christian Friedrich Spittler , on the day beautiful Mount St. Chrischona in Basel a theological seminary founded. Bibles and early scriptures were printed. The graduates of the training center took them with them in their work as so-called "pilgrim missionaries".
In 1908 the city missionary Friedrich Herrmann from Gießen became too small his "theological travel bookstore" and he founded a bookstore. Right from the start, the Protestant monthly “upwards” was published here - with around fifty thousand copies sold per month, it is one of the “exotic” journals within Protestant publications that does not depend on subsidies. Since January 2010, “upwards” has been merged with the “Moment mal” magazine of the Liebenzeller community association.
Immediately after the First World War, the Giessen bookseller Karl Peters recognized the opportunities and the task that lay in the great demand for Christian literature. In order to give the publishing work a better legal framework, he founded the Brunnen Verlag Gießen on September 1, 1919 as a 1½-man business, which was initially operated in personal union with the bookstore. The series “Witnesses of the Living God”, which was first published in the 1920s, comprised around one hundred available titles from Martin Luther to Martin Luther King in the best of times .
Prohibition during the Second World War
In 1930 Wilhelm Schmitz, who had been managing director of Brunnen Verlag since 1922, acquired the "von Münchow'sche Universitätsdruckerei". In 1940 the regime urgently advised the publisher to sell the printing works, and in 1943 the National Socialist government banned publishing. When in 1944 the publishing house and book store were destroyed by flames during the great bombing raid on Gießen, the publishing house had practically ceased to exist. The St. Chrischona pilgrim mission was only able to do literature work through the Schweizer Brunnen Verlag, founded in Basel in 1921 .
After the Second World War
It was not until 1948 that the victorious powers granted Brunnen Verlag a new license. In 1952 the company moved into a new publishing house in downtown Giessen (Lonystraße 19), took over the Spener Verlag and integrated its program into the Brunnen Verlag. With Rudolf Horn and Wilfried Jerke, two employees came to Brunnen Verlag in the 1960s, and they had a decisive influence on the expansion of the house. In the 1970s, the publishing house leased a 4,200 square meter plot of land from Chrischona GmbH for evangelism and community maintenance in the Gießen-West industrial park and in 1981 inaugurated a publishing house built on it, which was expanded in 1996 and 1999. Wilfried Jerke, the sole managing director of the publishing house from 1972 to 2002, has been supported as co- managing director by Detlef Holtgrefe, the previous editor-in-chief from May 1, 2002 , who took over sole management on January 1, 2004. Publishing director Holtgrefe was elected chairman of the Association of Protestant Booksellers and Publishers (VEB) for a further four years at the general meeting in June 2015.
A Bible reading aid was developed for the Bible program with “Dates with God” at the beginning of the 1970s. Initially more than a hundred thousand copies were sold annually in bookshops, now sales have leveled off at well over 50,000 copies a year.
In 1971 the Christian publishing cooperation ABC Team was founded, which initially included the Aussaat-Verlag , R. Brockhaus Verlag and Oncken-Verlag and the Christian publishing house , as well as the Brunnen Verlag , and later the Hänssler-Verlag , the Verlag der Francke-Buchhandlung and the Johannis-Verlag added. In 1972, “Jesus and Jerusalem”, the first four-color fountain illustrated book, as well as the so-called “work books”, tools for the community volunteers, were published. In 1987 the Brunnquell publishing house was taken over, some non-fiction books and biographies were added to the program and the children's book program was expanded. There are audio play cassettes and CDs for children, as well as several CD-ROMs and audio books. A DVD program was also set up. In July 2002 the logistics company ChrisMedia GmbH in Staufenberg near Gießen took over the delivery for the Brunnen Verlag. In 2004, the publishing house was listed for the first time by the trade magazine Buchreport in the publishing house ranking as the largest Protestant publishing house among around 5000 publishers in the German-speaking region.
The publisher is known as the owner of the rights to the German version of the poem "Traces in the Sand". The publisher publishes around 130 new books, DVDs and music CDs each year. In February 2016, the book trade shows 1828 available titles from the Brunnen Verlag.
On June 2, 2017, the Brunnen-Verlag including the ALPHA bookstores and the logistics company ChrisMedia GmbH (Staufenberg near Gießen ) was taken over by the publishing house of Francke-Buchhandlung (Marburg) and the Kawohl Verlag (Wesel) with 50% each . The day before, it had already been announced that the previous managing director of Brunnen-Verlag, Detlef Holtgrefe, was moving to Gerth Medien as publishing director on September 1, 2017 . In 2019, Peter Butenuth took over from Stefan Kemmer, the managing director.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cheerful old Chrischona child . In: 175 years Chrischona , Chrischona Panorama, February-March 2015 edition, p. 88.
- ↑ Brunnen Verlag can continue to use its publishing house , idea.de, message from February 27, 2019.
- ↑ Detlef Holtgrefe confirmed as VEB Chairman , Börsenblatt July 2, 2015
- ↑ DNB 012839582
- ↑ ABCteam-Verlagskooperation: Now 7 publishers involved, message from June 6, 2006 ( Memento from October 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Available titles from Brunnen Verlag , buchhandel.de, accessed on January 8, 2016.
- ↑ Francke and Kawohl take over Brunnen, ALPHA and ChrisMedia
- ↑ Detlef Holtgrefe becomes publishing director of Gerth Medien , idea.de, message from June 1, 2017.
- ↑ ALPHA / Brunnen / ChrisMedia: Change of managing director at Protestant group of companies , idea.de, notification of August 21, 2019.