Christoph Merian Verlag

The Christoph Merian Verlag (CMV) is a Swiss publishing company with headquarters in Basel with four permanent employees (2017). It is a company of the Christoph Merian Foundation . The publisher is a member of the Swiss Booksellers and Publishers Association SBVV and SWIPS - Swiss Independent Publishers .

founding

The foundation of the publishing house in 1976 was preceded by regular editorial activity by the Christoph Merian Foundation without its own publishing house. In 1973 the foundation decided to take over the annual periodical Basler Stadtbuch . At the beginning of the 1970s, this was no longer financially viable for the publishers at the time and was about to be discontinued. The foundation continued the traditional city book that had been published since 1879 with a new and topical concept and distributed it through a commission publisher.

The publishing house was only founded three years after the Basler Stadtbuch was taken over. The cooperation between the foundation and the commission publisher at the time turned out to be increasingly difficult. In order to provide a functioning framework for the production and distribution of Rudolf Suter's Basel German grammar and to tackle other book projects of its own, the foundation founded the Christoph Merian Verlag in 1976, which began operations that same year.

activity

The publisher decides independently on the publisher's program after this was originally controlled by an accompanying commission. The publishing house operates according to business and industry-standard principles, but also issues non-profitable publications in line with the foundation's activities. The publisher is known for carefully produced publications in terms of text, design and print quality. Several publications have been awarded prizes by the Book Art Foundation in the “The Most Beautiful German Books” competition. The publisher has its own stand at the Frankfurt Book Fair .

After books on regionally specific topics ("Basiliensia") also dominated books on foundation activities (socio-ethical publications), since 1996 the focus has been shifted and re-set in line with the public's interest. The series “Children's Books” and “Swiss Popular History” have been discontinued, and in recent years the international readership has increasingly been targeted with foreign-language titles. The current focus is on “Art and Architecture” and “Culture and Society” alongside the continuation of the publishing program with books on topics from the Basel region, including the series “Contributions to Basel History”. There are repeated publications in cooperation with larger museums or other cultural institutions as well as niche products. Currently, 20 to 25 new titles appear every year, and the publisher has produced around 500 books since 1976. The most successful publications include the complete edition of the diaries from the rainforest by Bruno Manser (first edition 2004, revised new edition 2019) and the 17-volume construction monograph series on the Novartis Campus (2005–2015).

From 2005 to 2017, more than 170 audio books were also produced, mainly in the joint audio book series in cooperation with SRF - Swiss Radio and Television . In addition, the publisher also produced its own readings and from 2007 to 2016 edited the winning feature of the international feature price competition of the Radio Basel Foundation . For the audio book Fallbeil für Gänseblümchen - the winning feature from 2012 about the espionage trial against Elli Barczatis and Karl Laurenz - the publisher was awarded the German Audio Book Prize. Due to the increasing sales difficulties in the audio book sector, this program segment was discontinued in 2017.

literature

• Christoph Merian Foundation (Ed.): To the new Basler Stadtbuch. In: Basler Stadtbuch 1973 , Basel 1974, pp. 7-14.
• Anna Wegelin: The hidden passion for letters - book publishers in Basel. In: Basler Stadtbuch 2003 , Basel 2004, pp. 86–87.
• Simon Erlanger: Christoph Merian Verlag: “We want to have an impact on the world from Basel” ( Basellandschaftliche Zeitung , June 1, 2016).

Web links

• Website of the Christoph Merian Verlag

Single receipts

1. ↑ Basler Stadtbuch The Basler Stadtbuch has been published as an online platform including an archive with all retro-digitized texts since 1879 after the print edition was completed in 2017.
2. ↑ Rudolf Suter: Baseldeutsch-Grammatik, 1992 (3rd edition) ( Memento of the original from August 11, 2017 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. 
3. ↑ Most recently Sandra Walti and Tina Schmid (eds.): REX, ROXY, ROYAL - A journey through the Swiss cinema landscape , 2017
4. ↑ Ulrike Jehle-Schulte Strathaus (ed.): Series of buildings on the Novartis Campus ( Memento of the original from August 11, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ Stiftung Radio Basel (ed.) / Maximilian Schönherr: Fallbeil für Gänseblümchen , 2012 ( Memento of the original from August 11, 2017 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.