Westermann Group

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Westermann Group

logo
legal form GmbH & Co. KG
founding 1838
Seat Braunschweig , Germany
management Sven Fischer (Chairman of the Management Board / CEO ), Timo Blümer (Commercial Management / CFO )
sales approx. 300 million euros (estimated; 2017 according to Buchreport Magazin)
Branch information and communication
Website www.westermanngruppe.de
Status: January 2020

The Westermann Group , headquartered in Braunschweig, is one of the most important German providers of educational media and one of the largest publishing houses in German-speaking countries. The company includes well-known publishing brands such as Arena , Bildungsverlag EINS , Diesterweg , LÜK , Schöningh , Schroedel , Westermann and Winklers . The Westermann Group produces media for general and vocational education, learning software , learning games , specialist magazines , online educational offers, atlases , cartographic products, books for children and young people and non-fiction . One of their best-known products is the Diercke World Atlas . The group of companies also includes printing and service companies.

Family-owned for five generations , the group of companies finally became the property of Medien Union (based in Ludwigshafen am Rhein ) in 1986 .

history

George Westermann

From the founding of the company to the end of the Second World War

On May 21, 1838, George Westermann (1810–1879) founded a publishing bookstore in Braunschweig with the support of the publisher Eduard Vieweg . He published mainly dictionaries, fiction and atlases. In 1845 Westermann set up his own print shop, and from 1849 onwards the range of media was expanded to include a magazine publisher. The first school atlas appeared in 1853. Westermann had set up a cartographic institute that enabled the production of atlases. After the death of George Westermann, his son Friedrich Westermann (1840–1907) took over the publishing house together with the other heirs and the authorized signatory Robert Brandt. In 1883 the first Diercke school atlas was published. In 1889 Friedrich Westermann became the sole owner of the publishing house.

In 1907 Georg Westermann (1869–1945) took over the Westermann publishing house. On July 1, 1908, the publishing house became a limited partnership ; After the departure of the authorized signatory Robert Brandt in the same year, Johannes Himstedt, Paul Krösing and Max Robert Hoffmann were named as the new authorized signatories. In 1912/13 the publishing house moved from the city center, where the first own commercial building was located from the 1840s, to the outskirts of the city on Riddagshäuser Weg (today's Georg-Westermann-Allee) in order to have more space for the printing plant to have. The first offset printing press was also installed there. In the same year a branch office was set up in Berlin. In 1914, the publishing clerk Hans Reichel joined the company management as a personally liable co-owner, while Georg Westermann withdrew from the active publishing business.

In 1917 the publishing house was expanded: the publisher Alfred Janssen (1865–1935) sold his “Verlag Alfred Janssen”, which was founded in Leipzig in 1891 and moved to Hamburg in 1899, to Georg Westermann. Janssen had relocated Gustav Falke's work, among other things . During the First World War , Westermann served as a reserve officer . In 1922 he left the company management and moved to Potsdam , where he died in 1945.

After the First World War, Westermann's World Atlas was published for the first time , combining history, economics and geography. This work appeared in many editions and editions up to the end of the 1930s. For this publishing achievement, Hans Reichel received an honorary doctorate from the University of Greifswald .

During this time, the publishing house for teaching materials was expanded, the first maps of which appeared in 1903 and - expanded to a wide range - could now be sold to schools and authorities. The acquisition of the Carl Flemming & Wiscott company in Glogau in 1931 brought about a significant expansion of cartography, whose “general maps” were continued and expanded by Westermann for around 15 years. Georg's younger son Everhard Westermann (1905–1973) joined his great-grandfather's company in 1931 as a personally liable partner. Georg Mackensen (1895–1965) joined the publishing house in 1933 and became a personally liable partner two years later. After Hans Reichel and his son Hellmut left the company in 1935, the company was again fully owned by the Westermann and Mackensen families until 1986. Georg Mackensen's successors were his two nephews Jürgen Mackensen and Gerd Mackensen and the son-in-law of George Westermann's great-grandson, Dirk Tebbenjohanns.

During the Nazi era, the publishing house cooperated with the NSDAP . Authors close to the National Socialists such as Hjalmar Kutzleb , Thor Goote and Heinrich Eckmann , the “poet of National Socialism” Georg Stammler and in particular the “ anti-Semitic slobbering” literary history of Adolf Bartels have been published . From 1938, the propaganda " Ewiges Deutschland " appeared in large print runs . In the commemorative publication for the centenary of the publishing house from 1938, the maxim for future publishing work was formulated as “commitment to the nascent empire of eternal Germany”. The book trade and publishing historian Reinhard Wittmann judges the role of Westermann in the Third Reich: "No" bourgeois "publisher has gone deeper into the brown area".

From the end of World War II to 2000

After the end of World War II , educational journals and materials for teaching were increasingly published. One of the first new publications of the publishing house after the war is expected in 1948 in the series Westermann texts published 40-page retelling of AA Milne's book Winnie the Pooh (Engl. Orig. Winnie-the-Pooh ) have been. This translation was based on an initiative of the German Educational Reconstruction Committee founded by German emigrants in British exile .

Subsequently, the publishing group showed a steady growth favored by acquisitions, for example through the purchase of the Heinz-Vogel-Verlag in 1968. In 1977/78 the first four-color web offset system was installed in the Braunschweig printing house. In 1979 Westermann acquired the Würzburger Arena Verlag for children's and youth literature. The year 1986 brought a significant upheaval: the group of companies passed from family ownership to the possession of Medien Union , based in Ludwigshafen am Rhein . The first managing director was Jürgen Richter, followed in 1994 by Hans-Dieter Möller, who was replaced by Ralf Halfbrodt in March 2014. In the course of German reunification in 1990, the Westermann Group acquired the Grafische Werke Zwickau printing company from the former Chemnitz district newspaper Freie Presse and reprocessed its school books and atlases for all federal states.

In the years 1990 to 1994, the publishing house expanded its range of products to include computer cartography and the first interactive CD-ROMs , as well as an information center in Leipzig and other locations in Germany and Austria. In 1997 the group set up its own website with an online catalog and in 1998 installed two computer-to-plate plate exposure systems in prepress . Other innovations in the graphic arts operations were uniform printing software, the expansion of the post-press department (finishing), a compound system for book thread stitching and a line for top tape production.

In 1998 the Westermann Group took over Winklers Verlag from Darmstadt, which specializes in media for commercial education and training . In 2007 the publishing house was relocated to the headquarters in Braunschweig. As early as 2004, Winklers was merged with other publishing brands to form the Bildungshaus Schulbuchverlage publishing group.

Since 2000

Westermann Group building in Braunschweig

Arena Verlag took over the program of Ensslin Verlag, which had existed since 1818, in 2000. In April 2002 the Westermann Group acquired the Paderborn Schöningh Verlag. In November of that year, it expanded through the purchase of a few school book publishers, which the Georg von Holtzbrinck publishing group had run under the name Das Bildungshaus . This is how the publishers Advesco-Schubi ( Schaffhausen ), Logo and Spectra ( Essen ), Moritz Diesterweg ( Frankfurt am Main ), Schroedel ( Hanover ) and the Schroedel subsidiary BMS Bildungsmedien Service came to Westermann. Most of these acquired publishers moved to Braunschweig in 2003/04. This bundling of activities at the headquarters of the Westermann Group was intended to improve its competitive position vis-à-vis the largest competitors Cornelsen and Klett , but it also resulted in the elimination of around 100 jobs.

In 2012/13 the Westermann Group further expanded its portfolio in the field of vocational training by acquiring the educational publisher EINS . The other publishing activities for vocational training (sold under the Westermann and Winklers publishing brands ) were also bundled at the Cologne location.

Since the end of 2017, as part of the introduction of the " umbrella brand strategy", the departure from traditional publishing brands in the education market has been initiated: New titles and products are characterized by a uniform corporate design and, in addition to the publishing brand, bear the Westermann Group's logo. In the long term, the publishing brand is to be completely replaced by the Westermann logo .

Structure of the Westermann Group

The Westermann Group is essentially divided into the publishing, printing and service divisions; Then there are the textbook centers distributed regionally in Germany. Locations that differ from the headquarters in Braunschweig are indicated after the company name. (As of May 2019)

a) publishers

b) printing houses

c) Service companies

  • Löwen Medien Service GmbH
  • VSB-Verlagsservice Braunschweig GmbH

d) textbook centers

The Westermann Group has textbook centers in Berlin, Braunschweig, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Hanover, Cologne, Leipzig, Munich and Stuttgart.

Known products

  • Diercke - atlases, cartographic products since 1883
  • Dorn / Bader - physics courses since 1957
  • Fara and Fu - fibula since 1976
  • Hermsen - accounting
  • Linder Biologie - biology work since 1948
  • The journey into the past - history since 1957
  • Schmolke / Deitermann - Bookkeeping since 1965
  • Seydlitz - Geography Works since 1824
  • World of Numbers - Mathematics since 1932/33

literature

  • Westermann. Profile of a publisher from 1838 to 1963. An anniversary report. 112 pages, published by Georg Westermann Verlag, text Volker Hohenberg, Druckerei und Kartographische Anstalt, Braunschweig 1963.
  • 150 years of Westermann 1838–1988… and I have the honor to report it to you. A company history spanning a century and a half. Westermann Verlag, Braunschweig 1988, ISBN 3-07-500000-0 .

Web links

Commons : Westermann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ buchreport.magazin April 2017.
  2. ↑ The 100 largest publishers: The book report analysis in several formats. In: buchreport.de. Harenberg Kommunikation Verlags- und Medien-GmbH & Co. KG, April 2017, accessed on July 19, 2018 .
  3. ^ Paul Zimmermann:  Westermann, George . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 42, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1897, pp. 184-186.
  4. ↑ Janssen, Alfred (1865–1935) on allegro.sub.uni-hamburg.de. Short biography of the publisher and bookseller in the database of the Hamburg State and University Library , where his estate is located.
  5. ↑ a b 150 years of Westermann 1838–1988 ... and I have the honor to report to you. A company history spanning a century and a half . Westermann Verlag, Braunschweig 1988; ISBN 3-07-500000-0 .
  6. ↑ a b c d Reinhard Wittmann : 8th publishing book trade . In: History of the German book trade in the 19th and 20th centuries . Volume 3, part 1. Walter de Gruyter , 2015. p. 332.
  7. ↑ Winnie the Pooh / AA Milne. Arranged by Fritz Schneider. In: Catalog of the German National Library. German National Library, Frankfurt am Main, accessed on July 19, 2018 .
  8. ↑ Learn, practice, control! Children have been playing with LÜK for 50 years. In: press release. Westermann Group, April 21, 2017, accessed on July 19, 2018 .
  9. ^ Westermann moves Darmstadt's Winklers Verlag to Braunschweig. In: Book Market. BuchMarkt Verlag K. Werner GmbH, February 13, 2007, accessed on July 19, 2018 .
  10. ↑ Article Westermann defends relocation plan , in: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung of February 7, 2003.
  11. ↑ Article Schroedel cuts 100 jobs , in: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung of April 8, 2003.
  12. ↑ Schroedel and Schöningh disappear. In: boersenblatt.net. Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, October 18, 2017, accessed on July 9, 2018 .
  13. ↑ Westermann Group acquires British learning software developer Blue Duck Education. Retrieved June 16, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Westermann learning game publishers become Georg Westermann Verlag. In: press release. Westermann Group, July 11, 2018, accessed on July 19, 2018 .
  15. ↑ Westermann Group invests in Switzerland. In: press release. Westermann Group, June 28, 2017, accessed on July 19, 2018 .
  16. ↑ 125 years of the Diercke World Atlas , Braunschweig 2008, among others
  17. ↑ Article The Fu Inventor. Every child knows their socks , in: Hamburger Morgenpost, March 5, 2009.
  18. ↑ Harald Witthöft, Cornelius Neutsch: Obituary for Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Birkenfeld. In: Personalia. University of Siegen, September 15, 2011, accessed on July 19, 2018 .
  19. ↑ Article “The Lord of Numbers”, in: Trierischer Volksfreund, 17./18. February 2007.

Coordinates: 52 ° 15 '36 "  N , 10 ° 33' 6.2"  E