Falk (publisher)
| Falk Content & Internet Solutions GmbH & Co. KG
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| legal form | GmbH & Co. KG |
| founding | 1945 in Hamburg |
| resolution | 2012 |
| Reason for dissolution | Merger with MAIRDUMONT |
| Seat | Ostfildern , Germany |
| management | Frank Mair |
| Number of employees | 93 (December 31, 2007) |
| sales | 45.5 million euros (2007) |
| Branch | Cartography , navigation system , fleet control solution |
| Website | www.falk.de |
The Falk Content & Internet Solutions GmbH & Co. KG was on city plans and maps of specialized publishing house based in Ostfildern near Stuttgart. The Falk-Verlag in 1945 by Gerhard Falk in Hamburg founded and until 1996 owned by the family. After the sale to the Bertelsmann group, the latter gave Falk-Verlag in 1998 to the MairDumont group. The company became part of MairDumont on August 30, 2012.
history
Legend has it that Gerhard Falk tried to find his way around in destroyed Hamburg in 1945 and was annoyed by an unwieldy city map. He came up with two ideas that led to a completely new product:
- The parabolic projection (so-called hyperboloid projection) allows you to change the scale within the city map . The city center with its narrow streets in the center is shown larger than the outlying districts. In the post-war period it was extremely difficult to organize paper for printing on. This projection helped to save paper as only a smaller format had to be printed.
- A folding technique patented for Falk in 1948 allows the user to find his way around the plan without unfolding it completely. Although the map is still printed on a single sheet of paper, you can turn it in any direction. The Falk plans were folded manually by homeworkers until the 1990s, and it was not until the 1990s that automatic folding machines of the most common sizes were used. The machine was developed by Alfred Vogtländer; it was also protected by patent.
Thanks to these innovations, but also thanks to a well-thought-out marketing strategy (for example, the term Falkplan was always used to inseparably link the city map with the company name), the publisher grew quickly and became Europe's leading city map producer, the maps of the largest cities Germany, but also the most important capitals of Europe and New York, Rio de Janeiro etc. a. had in the program.
The first years
- 1945 , start of work with some freelance employees in the rooms above a restaurant in Hamburg-Hoheluft
- 1946 , office in Hamburg-Winterhude . In June work appeared after eight months, the first edition of the Hamburg city map in hyperboloid projection and patent-folding and the total- and in some areas destroyed representation of the city, which was sold after a very short time. Within the first twelve months, 70,000 copies were sold for 3 RM each. The second city map (Hanover) was completed in December.
- 1947 , move to Hamburg's Kontorhausviertel ( Sprinkenhof initially with five rooms), establishment of a branch in West Berlin and a subsidiary in The Hague ; the plans for Hanover, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt (Main) and Munich appeared. The “Big Edition” of Hamburg appeared for the first time as a redrawn and much more extensive plan. In the usual number of editions at Falk, this new plan corresponds to the 6th edition. The previous Hamburg original plan has now been updated and distributed as a “small edition”.
- 1948 , the first plans for Berlin (in four languages) and Nuremberg appeared in the spring (Nuremberg: proof in January, edition printing - initially 20,000 copies - in May, 1st edition in June; total edition 60,000 copies); In May 1948, with the approval of the British occupying forces, a map of Falk's favorite island of Sylt was published with a print run of 30,000 copies with a map of Westerland on which every house was marked with its number next to the streets, next to it a list of the pensions with the name of the house and his address, the island railway timetable, the travel times of two express trains to and from Hamburg and the HAPAG seaside resort service between Hörnum and Cuxhaven and Hamburg were also recorded on the map; The Falk GmbH workforce consisted of 35 people, all under 30 years of age, and there were already 17 card titles. After the currency reform, the title covers were given a robust, glossy cover. So far, plain cardboard has been used.
- 1949 , the first foreign city maps appeared (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Rome), as well as the first automobile atlas Federal Republic of Germany;
- 1950 , the first million plans have been sold. A much expanded “Large Edition” is being published from Berlin. In terms of graphics, the plan was simply extended to the south.
- 1951 , São Paulo was the first non-European city map to appear (for Brazil, where many Germans lived at the time; South America was an important trading partner)
- 1952 , the world-epidemics Atlas was commissioned by the US Navy under the direction of Ernst Rodenwaldt made
- 1953 , work on the city map of the Ruhr area on a scale of 1: 50,000, Rio de Janeiro and Copenhagen began, 30 permanent employees. The previously usual representation of the "partially and totally destroyed areas" of the respective cities is now dispensed with.
- 1954 , order to produce a world atlas for the Gutenberg Book Guild , the light typesetting (Hohlux device) was introduced
- 1955 , u. a. the city map of Dortmund and an Austrian car atlas appeared , the thematic maps were created for a Gutenberg lexicon , the foil engraving was tested and introduced for the new production
- 1956 , the more extensive “Thinking” Falk-Plan Hamburg was published (editorial deadline, 1st edition Dec. 1955), numerous city maps were in the works, including London and Paris. Hamburg now has four different map titles for each target group: the Thinking Falkplan (DFP) with the entire national territory, especially for authorities and companies (according to the foreword), the large edition as a classic map with the main urban area, and Harburg and Bergedorf, the smaller “Volksausgabe” (later referred to as the Tourist Plan) and “Der kleine Falkplan”, which is folded 8 × 10 cm and updated based on the original plan from 1946 and thus only shows the inner city area.
- 1957 , the Auto Atlas Europe corresponded to the emerging tourism and goods traffic
- 1959 , the city maps of St. Louis and New York as well as the US Road Atlas were intended to open up new markets in North America
- 1960 , the Falk moon map with the nature-like representation of the side visible from the earth appeared, also u. a. the city maps of the FRG capital Bonn, Wuppertal, Saarbrücken and the Austrian capital Vienna. In October it was published for 2.50 DM under the publisher no. 462 the so-called Falk Pilot Plan Hamburg on a sliding scale 1: 33,500–1: 83,500, in which the simplified road network and the built-up parts of Hamburg and the surrounding area were shown in gray, plus the rail routes, parks, forests and, above all, numerous Sights and special features as vignettes designed by the graphic artist Alfred Grobe who works for Falk. These vignettes were repeated in the margin and explained with texts by Frank J. Wagner. There were now over 80 publishing products and 75 employees. The cover covers of the Falk plans, which were previously individually designed for each city, have been standardized: yellow background, landmarks as b / w photo, white city name on red bar, blue right edge with street grid, Falk logo top right.
- 1961 , Falk was named as Europe's largest city map publisher , the sales network was expanded with regional representatives who supplied booksellers , petrol stations , etc.
- 1962 , after the great storm surge in February 1962, the so-called Falk City Mirror appeared in the middle section of the attached directory in the 33rd edition of the patent-folded city map of Hamburg , the journalistic of Gertrud Schröder in various articles on topics of the city (e.g. "The great flood ... "," 1961: 1,848,000 Hamburgers! "," What does an apartment in Hamburg cost? "And" Hamburg in the evening ... "). In the 35th edition of the Hamburg city map from August 1963, a city map of the second year was attached. These city mirrors should appear in the city maps of the 30 largest cities. The bound into the 21st edition of the city map Frankfurt city levels reported in July 1962 following articles: "decided in 1961: Unterpflasterbahn", "banks - Exhibitions - large enterprises", "university with 7,800 students!" And "Tips for foreign motorists" but also the question “What does an apartment cost?” was answered.
Typical of the time, the Falk plans were advertised with concise slogans: “Don't run, buy a Falk plan” or “He walks through the city without a plan because he doesn't have a Falk plan” .
The world time clock (1965), also developed by Falk Verlag, consisted of a rotating cylinder, partially illuminated from the inside, on which a world map was depicted in an angular Mercator projection showing the time zones . The day side was illuminated, whereby the seasons should have been taken into account.
Further expansion in the 1960s and 1970s
In the 1960s, the Federal Republic of Germany Autoatlas was produced from scratch, and the From Copenhagen to Milan Autoatlas was published . New city maps of some small and medium-sized German cities appeared as "advertisement plans", in which advertisements were also placed next to the main map on the front. A map of the island of Sylt with a special representation of the localities was created. In 1969, together with the ADAC, a special “Auto-Stadt-Plan Hamburg” with the subtitle “Falkplan Städtemagazin” was published for 4.80 DM, which includes the city map of Hamburg folded to A4 format and a map of the area, maps of places the surrounding area, a map "Park according to plan" of Hamburg's old and new town with marking of the street areas with parking meters and the possible parking time as well as the parking garages and parking lots, a map "secret routes between Hamburg and the Baltic Sea", a directory of the streets within and outside Hamburg, directories of car workshops, ADAC contract hotels and a few others (more than 1000 addresses in total), information about the ADAC Gau Hansa, also an article “The world city explodes · Everything in and around Hamburg is growing: the region, the number of People, Cars, Streets ”by Werner Stahl, who was also the author of the city guide series“… from seven to seven ”distributed by Falk.
Due to the increasing expansion of many cities ( regional reform ), many city plans had to be expanded. The style of the different city plans was adjusted to one another, new techniques were introduced ( four-color printing ). In the Sprinkenhof on Burchardstrasse, more rooms were rented as the number of employees increased and new cartographers were trained from now on . On Wendenstrasse in Hamburg-Hammerbrook , rooms were used as a warehouse .
In the 1970s, car cards were also produced for the fuel company Texaco. Its own sales program was to travel and phrasebook from Berlitz extended, for which the cards were created. The increasing understanding with the Eastern bloc allowed new card titles such as Moscow, Budapest, Prague, Sofia, etc. a., but also Beijing appear in the sales lists. This was also achieved through a cooperation with the Hungarian cartographic company Cartographia Budapest , which produced these city maps. The Hungarians also made a number of plans for western cities (e.g. Oslo, Dublin, Liège, Koblenz, Oldenburg, Regensburg), as well as the “Autokarte Deutschland D / DDR” on a scale of 1: 800,000 with the two German states.
Dr. Helge Lintzhöft used. This meant that business operations were not seriously damaged when Gerhard Falk died on Sylt in 1978.
The 1980s and other collaborations
The publishing house was converted into a GmbH , but remained family-owned. The expansion of the product range through further city maps (e.g. Hof, produced in 1981 for Falk-Verlag by Haupka), street maps and car atlases and the expansion of the sales program to other publishing products such as city maps of smaller cities, city atlases of large metropolitan areas and maps of medium-scale ( 1: 100,000 and 1: 250,000) from the new production by the up-and-coming Hessian cartography company Haupka and existing road and country maps from Ravenstein-Verlag continued to establish the market importance. Of the largest cities maps were single in 1988 in addition to the "patent" -gefalteten spending Leporello fold launched, in addition to the main card and the next-placed city map and a map received a Map of Haupka on the back. These so-called “Falk Extra” plans were also printed at Hauptka in Bad Soden . The print jobs for the map titles managed by Falk Verlag in Hamburg and Berlin continued to be awarded to various print shops in the Hamburg area and in West Berlin, the titles produced by Cartographia Budapest were mostly also printed there, and the templates for the correction of the maps of German and Western European cities however created by the editorial office in Hamburg.
A cooperation with the Tourist Verlag der GDR made it possible to publish a "patent" folded city map of the trade fair city of Leipzig with the map of the Tourist Verlag. After the fall of the Wall in the GDR , the production of new city maps for the largest cities in the new federal states (Leipzig, Dresden, Magdeburg, Halle, Chemnitz, Rostock and Erfurt) was tackled immediately. The city plans of other, smaller cities were made - with simple leporello folding - in the usual way by Hauptka as Falk Extra plans. In addition, a completely new car map was created in Hamburg, which also included the area of the former GDR, with the "car card folding".
Break with Hauptka and cooperation with Bertelsmann with subsequent sale
At the beginning of the 1990s, the cooperation with Haupka, who in the meantime had taken over the Ravenstein publishing house, was not extended because the management of the Falk publishing house went too far with the increased demands of Bernd Haupka. The large gaps in the sales program resulting from the end of the cooperation were tried to close by - partly hastily put together - reworked products from RV Reise- und Verkehrsverlag , which belonged to the Bertelsmann group. This particularly affected almost all city atlases and medium-scale maps. The new production of many city maps of the smaller cities and the expansion of the not so comprehensive city atlases from RV map material was very time-consuming and costly. The entire cartographic / technical area of the two publishers (Falk and RV) was combined on July 1, 1994 in the new company GeoData geographical databases GmbH & Co. KG , based in Werder near Potsdam - and thus in the eligible accession area - the two Publishing houses (Falk as well as RV and thus Bertelsmann) each owned 50%. GeoData's locations were initially in Berlin, Hamburg, Leipzig (Lindenthal), Stuttgart and Werder near Potsdam. Before that - at the beginning of 1994 - Falk GmbH was converted into an AG .
In mid-1996, one year after the company's 50th anniversary, the company's founder's children, Alexander Falk , his sister Janina and the older daughter from his first marriage, Karin Falk, sold their inherited shares in the publishing house to Bertelsmann Buch AG for 50 million DM . During this time, the publishing house was relocated from Hamburg to Munich . Just two years later (at the end of 1998) the Falk publishing house was sold to the Mair Group ( Marco Polo Travel Guide, Baedeker ). The company headquarters are now in Ostfildern .
Further changes and adjustments
In the mid-1990s, the city map product range was largely converted to the coarser RV map display on a uniform scale. The quality of the cartography for the Falk city maps has grown very differently over time: With some city maps a lot of and more precise information was offered, right up to z. B. on house numbers , in others less. The plans, in which cartography made of Falk substance was still used (for the major cities of Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, Hanover, Dortmund, Cologne, Frankfurt / M., Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Munich), were particularly characterized by the hyperboloid projection the outskirts by a smaller representation. Around the turn of the century, the Extra versions (= without Falk fold in "normal" zigzag fold) with the coarser RV cartography on a uniform scale were offered for Hanover, Dortmund, Cologne, Frankfurt / M., Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Munich .
The plans of foreign cities were brought out at the end of the 1990s with a very simplified new cartography on a scale of 1: 15,000. Sometimes much less information (e.g. no representation of train and bus lines or one-way streets) is shown than in the days of Falk in Hamburg. This should be sufficient for tourist purposes in many cases, but it was still a great loss of information.
After the takeover of the ADAC subsidiary CartoTravel Verlag (Bad Soden, formerly Haupka) in July 2007, the map of the city map was changed once again. Many Falk plans have now appeared with the finer Hauptka map display of the ADAC city maps, which can then be used again in Falk city maps after about 15 years. Identical cartographies are currently available under different brands (Falk and ADAC), but in different colors.
Electronic offers
The Falk.de portal offers various services from route planning to hotel services and navigation software . Interactive route planners and navigation systems for cell phones or personal digital assistants (PDA) such as the Falk Navigator are also available here. In addition, a complete fleet control solution with electronic logbook, vehicle location and tracking including mobile navigation has been offered since 2008 .
Likelihood of confusion
The Falk Verlag is not affiliated with Falk eSolutions AG , a subsidiary of DoubleClick ( Google ).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Falk.de Imprint ( Memento from January 5, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ a b Electronic Federal Gazette, March 2, 2009, annual financial statements as of December 31, 2007
- ↑ Stuttgart District Court: Entry to erase the FALK Content & Internet Solutions GmbH & Co. KG , Sept. 10, 2012
- ↑ Stuttgart District Court: Entry on the merger of FALK CIS Management GmbH into MAIRDUMONT GmbH & Co. KG , September 3, 2012
- ↑ Amtsgericht Stuttgart: entry to merge into the MAIRDUMONT GmbH & Co. KG , Sept. 3, 2012
- ↑ patent DE835219 .
- ↑ patent DE3320731 .
- ^ AJM: The city plans . In: British Zone Review , a Monthly Review of the Activities of the Control Commission for Germany (BE), Vol. 2 No. 10 of March 20, 1948, p. 16
- ↑ Falk Verlag goes to Bertelsmann . In: Hamburger Abendblatt, July 30, 1996, No. 176, p. 25