Gruner + Jahr GmbH is apublishing house headquartered inHamburg, Germany.[1] The company was founded in 1965 byRichard Gruner [de],John Jahr [de], andGerd Bucerius.[2] From 1969 to 1973,Bertelsmann acquired a majority share in the company and gradually increased it over time. After 2014, the company was a fully owned subsidiary of theGütersloh-based media and services group.[3] Under the leadership and innovation strategy ofJulia Jäkel,[4][5] Gruner + Jahr evolved into a publishing house producing cross-channel media products for the digital society.[6][7][8]
With more than 500 magazines and digital products and services, Gruner + Jahr is one of Europe's largest premium magazine publishing companies.[9][10] Its activities primarily focus on Germany and France.[11] Among the most well-known media brands areBrigitte,Capital,Geo, andStern, along with Chefkoch.de and Stern.de.[10][12] In addition, Gruner + Jahr owns a share inSpiegel Verlag.[13]
In August 2021,RTL Deutschland announced the acquisition of Gruner + Jahr for €230 million euros. The deal was completed on January 11, 2022, from which point the Gruner + Jahr became a brand of the RTL Deutschland group.[14] The company was later renamedRTL Publishing.
Gerd Bucerius, Richard Gruner, and John Jahr in 1968
Gruner + Jahr was founded in 1965 by Richard Gruner, John Jahr, and Gerd Bucerius.[15] Bucerius and Jahr publishedmagazines, and Gruner ran aprinting firm.[16] The impetus for the three entrepreneurs to merge was the need to achieve positiveeconomies of scale, for example with regard to purchasing paper for the printing firms or to the distribution of magazines via reading circles.[2] The merger was promoted mainly by Gerd Bucerius,[17] and the magazines that theshareholders brought into the company formed the basis for the joint business of Gruner + Jahr.[18] The key magazines were, among others,Brigitte,Capital,Stern, andSchöner Wohnen. By 1965, they had a joint circulation running into the millions.[19] The company Gruner + Jahr was established as alimited liability partnership, in which Gruner held 39.5%, Jahr 32.3%, and Bucerius 28.2% of the shares.[18] By 1968, sales had grown to over 400 million Deutsche Mark. This made Gruner + Jahr Germany's largest press company at the time, next toAxel Springer.[20]
In 1969, Richard Gruner stepped down from the company. Differences concerning the political and strategic orientation of the publishing house prompted this move.[16][21] Gruner gave up his shares to his co-shareholders, Bucerius and Jahr, who for a short time each owned 50%.[22] Both subsequently sold 25% of Gruner + Jahr to Bertelsmann.[23][24] In 1970, Bucerius and Jahr transitioned into the newly createdsupervisory board, and management responsibility was entrusted to a five-personexecutive board.[25] In 1971, with a view to strengthening the management's independence, the company converted the general partner (shareholder with unlimited liability) of Gruner + Jahr into astock corporation.[26] Following his retirement from the operative business, in 1973 Bucerius swapped his shares in Gruner + Jahr for an equity stake in Bertelsmann. As a result, the group advanced to become the majority shareholder in Gruner + Jahr,[15] and, by 1975, Bertelsmann had increased its share to a total of 74.9%.[3] Upon the retirement of Bucerius, the rights to the weekly newspaperDie Zeit were transferred to a foundation in order to safeguard the publication's business independence over the long term.[27]
In the 1960s and 1970s, the business of Gruner + Jahr was initially focused on expanding activities in the German market.[26] An example of this was the acquisition of minority shareholdings in Spiegel Verlag and Vereinigte Motor-Verlage (todayMotor Presse Stuttgart [de]) in the year 1971.[28][29] At the end of the 1970s, the company then embarked on a period of expansion abroad: In France, the subsidiary Participations Edition Presse (todayPrisma Media [fr]) was established in 1978,[30] and that same year, Gruner + Jahr acquired the Spanish publishing companyCosmos Distribuidora [es] and the US printing firmBrown Printing. In the 1980s, additional shareholdings and subsidiaries were acquired abroad, for example in Great Britain.[31]
By the mid-1980s, the employees of Gruner + Jahr were spread throughout various buildings along Hamburg's OuterAlster Lake.[32] To promote collaboration within the publishing house and to create space for additional staff, construction of a press building onBaumwall began in 1985.[33] The company's headquarters remain at that address to this day. The property on which the press building was built is situated betweenSt. Michael's Church and theSpeicherstadt. It was previously owned by the City of Hamburg and has floor space of 22,000 m².[34] Construction work was largely completed in 1989, and the first employees moved into the press building one year later.[35] The building project cost roughly 300 millionDeutsche Mark. At the time the press building was commissioned, it offered space for 2,000 employees and was thus Hamburg's largest inner-city office block.[34][36][35]
Following theGerman reunification in 1989/90, Gruner + Jahr was instrumental in building up a free press in the new German states. For example, the company founded theDresdner Morgenpost [de] and,[37] shortly thereafter, theChemnitzer Morgenpost [de] daily newspaper.[38] In 1991, Gruner + Jahr acquired the Sächsisches Druck- und Verlagshaus, where theSächsische Zeitung is published.[39] The company also acquired a stake in Berliner Verlag – initially 50% in 1990, then 100% from 1992 on.[40] Among its leading newspapers areBerliner Zeitung andBerliner Kurier.[41] Internationally, Gruner + Jahr attracted a lot of attention by acquiring seven magazines belonging toThe New York Times Company.[42] In 1994, the company advanced to become a leading US publishing house and, for the first time in its history, generated half of its sales revenues outside of Germany.[43][44][45]
In 1995, Gruner + Jahr launched websites under the domains geo.de, mopo.de, pm-magazin.de, stern.de and tvtoday.de as one of the first professional service providers on the world wide web.[26][46] In the years that followed, digital business models assumed an ever-greater importance: In 1997, the company launchedFireball, a search engine specially geared towards German-language content.[47][48] This was followed byPaperball [de] in 1998, a search engine specializing in news.[49] An e-mail provider (Firemail) was also part of the portfolio.[50] In the year 2000, Gruner + Jahr incorporated Fireball and its related brands intoLycos Europe.[51] In exchange, Gruner + Jahr received a stake in the company,[52] theIPO of which was imminent.[53] From the end of 2000, following the bursting of thedot-com bubble,[54] Gruner + Jahr once again concentrated on content-based services, that is, on the websites of its media brands.[55]
At around the turn of the millennium, Gruner + Jahr sold off several regional daily newspapers.[56][57] In 1999, the company divested itself of theZeitung zum Sonntag [de], a free Sunday newspaper.[58][59] The deficit-ridden Hamburger Morgenpost was sold in 1999 to Hans Barlach and Frank Otto.[60][61] In addition, Gruner + Jahr divested itself of several regional editions of the Sächsische Zeitung.[62] At the same time, the company established Financial Times Deutschland, a new Germany-wide business newspaper.[63][64] This initiative was one of the most ambitious newspaper projects of the time.[65] In the year 2000, Gruner + Jahr purchasedInc. andFast Company, two leading business magazines.[66]
In 2002, Gruner + Jahr sold the Berliner Verlag publishing company to theGeorg von Holtzbrinck publishing group. Due to the concentration in the Berlin newspaper market, some media commented critically on the transaction.[67][68] In 2003, Gruner + Jahr sold off parts of its newspaper business in Eastern Europe to theRingier group.[69]
After selling Berliner Verlag, Gruner + Jahr once again focused on its business with magazines and printing firms.[70] In mid-2003, the company began developing various new magazines, withNeon and Brigitte Woman among its new German market launches.[71][72][73][74]
Gruner + Jahr continued to expand, despite an increasingly difficult market environment.[75][76] The company further pursued this strategy in the years that followed and planned additional acquisitions,[77][78] but prescribed a regimen of belt-tightening in Germany and the United States.[79] In 2004, Gruner + Jahr, in cooperation withArvato and Axel Springer, founded the printing service providerPrinovis [de].[80][81] One year later, in 2005, Gruner + Jahr sold off its entire US business toMeredith Corporation,[82][83] andCondé Nast acquired one individual youth magazine.[84] The company thus largely exited the US market,[85] where, up to that time, it had been the sixth-largest magazine publisher.[86]
Due to the2008 financial crisis, from 2007 Gruner + Jahr was forced to close several magazines.[87][88] The company was economically healthy and debt-free, yet it was combating declining ad revenues.[89] Irrespective of this trend, Gruner + Jahr introduced new magazines onto the market.[90] Following the losses of the previous year, the company returned to the profit zone in 2010.[91][92] As part of strategic transformation activities, the executive board was restructured, and in 2013, Julia Jäkel becameChief Executive Officer (CEO).[93] Whereas the digital business sector became more and more important,[94][95] printing operations waned in significance: After Prinovis announced in 2013 that the former Gruner printing company in Itzehoe would be closing,[96] Gruner + Jahr divested itself of its US subsidiary Brown Printing in 2014.[97] This meant a "turning point" for the company because it marked the selling off of the company's last operative business in the United States.[98][99]
In 2014, Bertelsmann came to an agreement with the heirs of John Jahr concerning the purchase of their remainingshares of 25.1%.[100][101][102][103][104] The takeover was intended to signify a commitment to journalism.[105] Bertelsmann thus strengthened itsjournalism business,[106] especially through the established media brands of Gruner + Jahr.[107] The executive board of Gruner + Jahr was confirmed and the company re-introduced the legal entity used up until 1971 (limited partnership).[108][109][110] Gruner + Jahr then intensified its cooperation with other Bertelsmann companies.[111] Territory is an example for this strategic shift.[112]
Over the past few years, Gruner + Jahr, under the leadership of Julia Jäkel, has been vastly transformed and strategically repositioned.[113][114] In 2016, Gruner + Jahr sold its magazine business in Spain to an investor and withdrew from Austria.[115][116] By expanding digital activities and innovation in the area of traditional magazines, Gruner + Jahr's business has continued its successful expansion.[117][118] The company has expanded its digital services and developed into one of the key market players in digital marketing.[119][6]
Furthermore, in 2017, the marketing arm of Gruner + Jahr in cooperation with theRTL-subsidiary IP Deutschland and Smartclip, established theAd Alliance, under the umbrella of which new services have been developed for advertisers and agencies.[120][121][122] The Ad Alliance's cross-media platform reaches more than 99% of the German population monthly,[123][124] and Spiegel Media and Media Impact have now also joined it.[125]
In 2017, Gruner + Jahr announced it was moving toHafenCity and building new headquarters.[126][127] The modern new building, will reflect the innovation strategy being pursued by Gruner + Jahr.[128][129] The press building at Baumwall was sold to the city, which wants to use it for its own purposes after Gruner + Jahr's move has been completed.[130][126]
French media conglomerateVivendi acquired Prisma Media from Bertelsmann in 2020 and later the company spun-out its publishing operation (including Prisma Media) intoLouis Hachette Group in 2024.[131][132]
The group holding company is Gruner + Jahr GmbH, headquartered in Hamburg. It is alimited liability company (GmbH) under German law, and its shareholders are Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA, as well as two holding companies which are also part of the Bertelsmann Group.[1] Three people sit on the executive board of Gruner + Jahr GmbH: Julia Jäkel is Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Oliver Radtke isChief Operating Officer (COO), and Stephan Schäfer isChief Product Officer (CPO).[133] Their contracts were last renewed in 2018 for five years.[134][135]
Gruner + Jahr is one of eight corporate divisions of Bertelsmann.[136] The annualfinancial statements are included in the consolidated financial statements, and not separately published. In the 2020 business year, Gruner + Jahr achieved sales of 1.1 billion euros.[137] Gruner + Jahr owns companies and hold equity participation in several companies in Germany and abroad, including Prisma Media, for example.[138]
The most important German-language magazines of Gruner + Jahr in terms of popularity and scope areBrigitte,Capital,Eltern [de],Eltern family,Essen & Trinken [de],Essen & Trinken für jeden Tag,National Geographic Deutschland,P.M. Magazin,Schöner Wohnen, andStern.[139] Since 2013, all publications from Gruner + Jahr have been clustered into eight units called "Communities of Interest."[140] Both print and digital cross-media content is created there.[141]
In the last few years, Gruner + Jahr has significantly increased its digital activities.[142][143] Sales in the digital field have experienced exceptional growth over the past years. In its core markets, digital sales account for more than a third of total sales.[144] Gruner + Jahr invests not only in its own platforms but also in the services of third parties: For example, astart-up fund was launched in 2015,[145][146] and in 2016, an online shop was created under the Schöner Wohnen brand.[147] The ad-tech companyAppLike, established in 2016, was spun off in 2017 thanks to its strong growth.[148][149]
In 2004, Gruner + Jahr joined forces withStern to create the Henri Nannen Prize, which since 2016 has been referred to simply as theNannen Prize [de].[150] The award honors outstanding journalistic achievements in categories such as reporting, documentation, and photography.[151][152] The role model for the Henri Nannen Prize was theEgon Erwin Kisch Prize, created in 1977 byHenri Nannen.[153] It developed into one of the most renowned journalism prizes in the German-speaking region and today is continued as a category of the Nannen Prize.[154][155]Peter Scholl-Latour was the first journalist and author to receive the Henri Nannen Prize in 2005 for his life's work as a journalist.[156] Other laureates have included former German ChancellorHelmut Schmidt (2010).[157] Gruner + Jahr regularly honors special achievements in the service of press freedom with a special award, whichLaura Poitras received in 2014 for her involvement in the uncovering of the global surveillance and spying affair byEdward Snowden.[158][159][160]
Gruner + Jahr did not train journalists in the 1960s and 70s.[161] In 1978, this changed: TheHenri Nannen School was established, modeled after theGerman School of Journalism.[162] It was initially called the Hamburg School of Journalism and, in 1983, received the name it bears today, in honor of the Stern founder, Henri Nannen.[163]Wolf Schneider was integrally involved in its founding and served as its director for 16 years.[161][164] Today, the Henri-Nannen School is based in Hamburg'sKontorhaus Stubbenhuk [de].[165] The school provides training for newspaper, magazine, radio, television, and online journalists across various genres.[166] The Henri Nannen School is a limited liability company,[1] backed up by the Gruner + Jahr,Die Zeit andDer Spiegel publishing houses.[167][168]
In 1983, the company was clouded by the affair surrounding the allegedHitler diaries.[169] The affair was to go down in history as Stern's greatest ever miscalculation and caused significant damage to the public image of Gruner + Jahr and Bertelsmann.[170][171][172] Stern magazine subsequently suffered a severe decline in circulation, which proved to be only temporary, however. Gruner + Jahr and Bertelsmann responded with severe personnel consequences.[173] For example, the magazine's publisher, Henri Nannen, was forced to resign, even though he personally had done nothing wrong.[174] Today, the publishing of the alleged Hitler diaries is considered a textbook example of failure in the field of media ethics.[175]
In 2013, Gruner + Jahr announced it would be handing over the forged Hitler diaries to theGerman Federal Archives.[176] To date, this has not occurred; the forged Hitler diaries are still archived in the Gruner + Jahr publishing house.[177]
^abThomas Lehning (2004),Das Medienhaus: Geschichte und Gegenwart des Bertelsmann-Konzerns (in German), Paderborn, München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, p. 139,ISBN3-7705-4035-2
^abHenning Kornfeld (2014), "Gruner + Jahr: "Das Nokia unter den Verlagen"",Kress Report (in German), no. 19, p. 6
^abInsa Sjurts (1996),Die deutsche Medienbranche: Eine unternehmensstrategische Analyse (in German), Wiesbaden:Gabler Verlag, p. 99,ISBN978-3-322-96462-5
^Ralf Dahrendorf (2000),Liberal und unabhängig: Gerd Bucerius und seine Zeit (in German), München: Verlag C.H.Beck, p. 179,ISBN3-406-46474-2
^Thomas Lehning (2004),Das Medienhaus: Geschichte und Gegenwart des Bertelsmann-Konzerns (in German), Paderborn, München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, pp. 142–143,ISBN3-7705-4035-2
^"Erster Schritt",Der Spiegel (in German), no. 12, 1970, retrieved1 September 2016
^"Wenn ich 70 bin",Der Spiegel (in German), no. 24, 1970, retrieved1 September 2016
^Uwe Kiessler, Otto Steidle (1991),Verlagshaus Gruner + Jahr Hamburg (in German), München, Stuttgart: Oktagon Verlag, p. 18,ISBN3-927789-15-1
^"G+J-Konzentration auf Berlin",Horizont (in German), no. 37, p. 1, 1992
^"Gruner + Jahr mit Chemnitzer Morgenpost",Handelsblatt (in German), p. 21, 22 August 1990
^""Sächsische Zeitung" ging an Gruner und Jahr",Handelsblatt (in German), p. 21, 17 September 1991
^Donata Riedel (18 February 1992), "G+J schluckt Berliner Verlag allein",Die Tageszeitung (in German), p. 7
^"Holtzbrinck kauft "Berliner Zeitung"",Der Tagesspiegel (in German), p. 35, 27 June 2002
^Thomas Lehning (2004),Das Medienhaus: Geschichte und Gegenwart des Bertelsmann-Konzerns (in German), Paderborn, München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, pp. 150–151,ISBN3-7705-4035-2
^"Bertelsmann-Tochter kauft Frauenzeitschriften",Handelsblatt (in German), p. 10, 20 June 1994
^"Gruner + Jahr kauft in USA ein",Der Tagesspiegel (in German), 18 June 1994
^"Big Deal für G+J in USA",Horizont (in German), no. 25, p. 6, 1994
^Insa Sjurts (1996),Die deutsche Medienbranche: Eine unternehmensstrategische Analyse (in German), Wiesbaden:Gabler Verlag, p. 163,ISBN978-3-322-96462-5
^Ralf Wegner (1997), "Ein Fireball für deutsche Sites",Horizont (in German), no. 25, p. 46
^"Fireball vorgestellt",Handelsblatt (in German), p. 40, 24 June 1997
^"Zeitungssuchmaschine im Internet",Handelsblatt (in German), p. 24, 21 April 1998
^Holger Bleich (2000), "Freemailer als Kommunikationszentralen",C't Magazin (in German), no. 11, p. 140
^"Fireball geht in Lycos auf",Berliner Zeitung (in German), p. 34, 8 March 2000
^abBernd Matthies (2 April 2004), "Die Rechtschreiber",Der Tagesspiegel (in German), p. 31
^Siegfrid Weischenberg, ed. (1990),Journalismus & Kompetenz: Qualifizierung und Rekrutierung für Medienberufe (in German), Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, p. 94,ISBN978-3-531-12089-8
^Ole von Beust (5 April 2004), "Hamburg als wichtigen Medienstandort erhalten",Die Welt (in German), p. 30
^abjoint venture with Amperwelle Studio München Programmanbietergesellschaft,Axel Springer AG, Burda, Studio Gong, m.b.t. Mediengesellschaft der bayerischen Tageszeitungen für Kabelkommunikation, Medienpool and Radio Bavaria Rundfunkprogrammgesellschaft.
^joint venture with Verlagsgesellschaft Madsack, Studio Gong Niedersachsen and Brune-Rieck-Beteiligungs.
^joint venture with Axel Springer, Heinrich Bauer Verlag, Lühmanndruck Harburger Zeitungsgesellschaft and Morgenpost Verlag.
€1.1 billion (2020)
