Walter de Gruyter GmbH, known as De Gruyter (), is a German scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature.

History

The roots of the company go back to 1749 when

Frederick the Great Frederick II (; 24 January 171217 August 1786) was the monarch of Prussia from 1740 until his death in 1786. He was the last Hohenzollern monarch titled ''King in Prussia'', declaring himself ''King of Prussia'' after annexing Royal Prussia ...

granted the Königliche Realschule in Berlin the

royal privilege A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

to open a bookstore and "to publish good and useful books". In 1800, the store was taken over by Georg Reimer (1776–1842), operating as the ''Reimer'sche Buchhandlung'' from 1817, while the school's press eventually became the ''Georg Reimer Verlag''. From 1816, Reimer used a representative palace at Wilhelmstraße 73 in Berlin for his family and the publishing house, whereby the wings contained his print shop and press. The building later served as the Palace of the Reich President. Born in

Ruhrort Ruhrort () is a district in the borough of Homberg/Ruhrort/Baerl within the German city of Duisburg situated north of the confluence of the Ruhr (river), Ruhr and the Rhine, in the western part of the Ruhr Area, Ruhr area. Ruhrort has the largest ...

in 1862, Walter de Gruyter took a position with Reimer Verlag in 1894. By 1897, at the age of 35, he had become sole proprietor of the hundred-year-old company then known for publishing the works of German romantics such as

Johann Gottlieb Fichte Johann Gottlieb Fichte (; ; 19 May 1762 – 29 January 1814) was a German philosopher who became a founding figure of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, which developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Ka ...

Friedrich Schleiermacher Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (; ; 21 November 1768 – 12 February 1834) was a German Reformed Church, Reformed theology, theologian, philosopher, and biblical scholar known for his attempt to reconcile the criticisms of the Age o ...

, and

Heinrich von Kleist Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist (; 18 October 177721 November 1811) was a German poet, dramatist, novelist, short story writer and journalist. His best known works are the theatre plays ''The Prince of Homburg'', '' Das Käthchen von Heilbronn'' ...

. De Gruyter later acquired four other publishing houses – Göschen, Guttentag, Trübner, and Veit – and, in 1919, merged them into one: ''Vereinigung wissenschaftlicher Verleger Walter de Gruyter & Co''., located in Genthiner Straße, where it is still headquartered today. The four publishers specialized in philosophy, theology,

German literature German literature () comprises those literature, literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy ...

, medicine, mathematics, engineering, law,

political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...

, and

natural science Natural science or empirical science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer ...

, and it is for many classics in these fields that de Gruyter is still known today. By the time he died in 1924, Walter de Gruyter had created one of the largest modern publishing houses in Europe. De Gruyter's son-in-law, Herbert Cram (1893–1967) succeeded him in the management of the company and it continues to be family-owned. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, the roof and top floor of the de Gruyter building were destroyed and the basement warehouse flooded, but the building itself survived. On 14 May 1945, the publisher again registered for trading and was the first publisher in the British zone to receive a license. The company became Walter de Gruyter GmbH in 2012. In addition to its headquarters in Berlin, De Gruyter maintains offices around the globe, namely in

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

, Vienna,

Basel Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High Rhine, High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's List of cities in Switzerland, third-most-populo ...

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

, and Beijing. In October 2023, it was announced that De Gruyter would acquire the Dutch publisher

Brill Brill may refer to: Places * Brielle (sometimes "Den Briel"), a town in the western Netherlands * Brill, Buckinghamshire, a village in England * Brill, Cornwall, a small village to the west of Constantine, Cornwall, UK * Brill, Wisconsin, an un ...

for €51.1 million, forming the new company De Gruyter Brill, by the second quarter of 2024.

Imprints and partnerships

Several former publishing houses have become imprints of De Gruyter: * "De Gruyter Mouton/De Gruyter Saur" (formerly "Mouton de Gruyter") was purchased by de Gruyter in 1977. It was originally known as Mouton Publishers and based in

The Hague The Hague ( ) is the capital city of the South Holland province of the Netherlands. With a population of over half a million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands. Situated on the west coast facing the North Sea, The Hague is the c ...

. The imprint specializes in the field of

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

and publishes

academic journal An academic journal (or scholarly journal or scientific journal) is a periodical publication in which Scholarly method, scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. They serve as permanent and transparent forums for the ...

s, research

monograph A monograph is generally a long-form work on one (usually scholarly) subject, or one aspect of a subject, typically created by a single author or artist (or, sometimes, by two or more authors). Traditionally it is in written form and published a ...

s, reference works, multimedia publications, and

bibliographies Bibliography (from and ), as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from ). English author and bibliographer John Carter describes ''bibliograph ...

. * K. G. Saur Verlag, based in

, was acquired in 2006 and retains the imprint "De Gruyter Saur". It specializes in reference information for libraries. * De Gruyter acquired the journals of

Berkeley Electronic Press Bepress is a commercial, academic software firm owned by RELX Group. It began in 1999 as the Berkeley Electronic Press, co-founded by academics Robert Cooter and Aaron Edlin. It makes products and services to support scholarly communication, ...

in 2011. * After filing for

bankruptcy protection Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the deb ...

in 2012, publisher

Birkhäuser Birkhäuser was a Swiss publisher founded in 1879 by Emil Birkhäuser. It was acquired by Springer Science+Business Media in 1985. Today it is an imprint used by two companies in unrelated fields: * Springer continues to publish science (parti ...

was acquired by De Gruyter. * In 2012 De Gruyter also acquired the

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

publisher Versita. From 2014 until 2018, Versita was fully integrated into the imprint "De Gruyter Open", which also hosted several so-called

mega journals A mega journal (also mega-journal and megajournal) is a peer-reviewed academic journal, academic open access journal designed to be much larger than a traditional journal by exercising low selectivity among accepted articles. It was pioneered by '' ...

and a blog, OpenScience, on open access in academia, reflecting the growing popularity of open access among researchers and academic institutions. In 2018, De Gruyter Open was relaunched as Sciendo. * In 2013 De Gruyter acquired two academic publishers from

Cornelsen Verlag Cornelsen Verlag () is a German textbook publisher that offers educational media in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Initially focused on the English language, the publishing house, founded in Berlin in 1946, specialized in the development of te ...

: ''Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag'' and ''

Akademie Verlag :''There also were unrelated publishing houses in Stuttgart and in (East-)Berlin, and there is the (JAVG).'' Akademie Verlag (AV) is a German scientific and academic publishing company, founded in 1946 in the Soviet-occupied eastern part ...

''. * In 2019, De Gruyter acquired Jovis Verlag. De Gruyter is one of thirteen publishers to participate in the

Knowledge Unlatched Knowledge Unlatched (KU) is an Open Access service provider registered as a for-profit GmbH in Berlin, Germany, and owned by multinational commercial publishing company Wiley as of December 2021. It offers a crowdfunding model to support a varie ...

pilot, a global library consortium approach to funding

open access book An open-access monograph (open-access book or OA book) is a scholarly publication usually made openly available online with an open license. These books are freely accessible to the public, typically via the internet. They are part of the open ac ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:De Gruyter 1749 establishments in Prussia Academic publishing companies Book publishing companies of Germany Companies based in Berlin German companies established in 1749 Publishing companies established in the 1740s Publishing companies of Germany

History

Imprints and partnerships

See also

References

Further reading

External links