Gräfe and Unzer

Gräfe and Unzer
legal form	GmbH
founding	1722
Seat	Munich , Germany
management	Ulrich Ehrlenspiel, Thomas Ganske, David Gottscheber, Joachim Rau
Branch	Publishing
Website	www.graefe-und-unzer.de
	Status: 2019

Gräfe und Unzer (GU) is a 1722 in Königsberg i. Pr. Founded publisher. The company has been based in Munich since 1946 . The company has been part of the Ganske publishing group since 1990 . Gräfe und Unzer is one of the 30 largest German-language publishers and, in sub-markets for non - fiction books, has the highest turnover in Europe.

history

Last Christmas in the House of Books (1943)

Gräfe und Unzer was founded by Gottfried Eckart in Königsberg (Prussia) in 1722 as the House of Books . In 1832 August Wilhelm Unzer handed over the range to his son Johann Otto and his son-in-law, the Hamburg bookseller Heinrich Eduard Gräfe . The bookstore has since operated under the name Gräfe und Unzer . Otto Paetsch , sole owner of the company since 1927, turned the company into Europe's largest and most modern bookstore . The building burned down during the air raids on Königsberg in August 1944.

In the post-war period after the Second World War, Gräfe und Unzer became a pure book publisher in Germany and achieved steady growth in the advice market. From 1961 Kurt Prelinger converted the publishing house into a guidebook publishing house. Since the 1970s, Gräfe und Unzer has been the strongest publisher of cookbooks in Germany. Best sellers from this time are “Cooking Today” and “Baking pleasure like never before”.

In 1990 Gräfe and Unzer was sold to Hoffmann and Campe Verlag in Hamburg. With that, publisher Thomas Ganske became the new owner.

The publisher is a member of the German Book Trade Association .

Assortment providers and publishers

Kantersche bookstore in Löbenicht's town hall (right)

Counts and Unzer in Koenigsberg

1722–1746: Christoph Gottfried Eckart
1746–1756: Johann Heinrich Hartung
1756–1759: Michael Christian Hartung
1759–1759: Gebhard Ludwig Woltersdorf
1759–1766: Johann Daniel Zeise († 1766)
- 1732–1764: Philipp Christoph Kanter . Kanter was initially a competitor of the bookstore until Hartung jun. took over his company and established himself there in the Löbenicht town hall. Basically, GU got a "second root"
- 1760–1781: Johann Jacob Kanter
1766–1797: Gottlieb Lebrecht Hartung
1799–1808: Johann Philipp Göbbels
1808–1831: August Wilhelm Unzer
1832–1867: Eduard Gräfe
1867–1877: Heinrich Wilhelm Graefe
1878-1893: Carl Richard Dreher
1893–1902: Hugo Pollakowsky
1902–1927: Otto Paetsch
1928–1960: Bernhard Koch
1961–1990: Kurt Prelinger
since 1990: Thomas Ganske

Publishing program

Books are offered under the brand name GU , which are related to the departments "Cooking & Pampering" (since 1975 with the "world's most successful cookbook series" Kitchen Guide ), "Body, Mind & Soul", "Partnership & Family" and "Garden, Pet & Nature ”as well as Lifestype books under the names of prominent people such as Johann Lafer , Sarah Wiener , Nina Ruge or Ursula Karven . Wine and cookbooks are published under the Hallwag and Teubner brands .

The publisher delivers around 800 titles. He designs almost everything himself, while license publishers publish his productions almost unchanged in other languages. GU has approx. 300 new license agreements annually as well as international co-productions and co-editions, including with book clubs and mail order companies. The USA (there are no pure advisory publishers there) are GU's largest licensing market.

On December 1, 2007, the publisher opened the cooking community kuechengoetter.de , where users can post , discuss and exchange recipes. The database contains over 50,000 recipes from GU books.