 | |
| Parent company | De Gruyter Brill |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1749; 276 years ago (1749) |
| Founder | Georg Reimer |
| Country of origin | Germany |
| Headquarters location | Berlin |
| Distribution | HGV (most of world) TriLiteral (Americas Books) EBSCO (US journals)[1] |
| Key people | Carsten Buhr (CEO) |
| Imprints | De Gruyter Mouton De Gruyter Saur Birkhäuser De Gruyter Akademie De Gruyter Oldenbourg |
| Revenue | €63 million (2017)[2] |
| No. of employees | ca. 350[2] |
| Official website | degruyter |
Walter de Gruyter GmbH, known asDe Gruyter (German:[dəˈɡʁɔʏtɐ]), is a Germanscholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature.[3]
The roots of the company go back to 1749 whenFrederick the Great granted theKönigliche Realschule in Berlin theroyal privilege to open a bookstore and "to publish good and useful books".[4] In 1800, the store was taken over by Georg Reimer (1776–1842), operating as theReimer'sche Buchhandlung from 1817, while the school's press eventually became theGeorg 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.[5] The building later served as thePalace of the Reich President.[6]
Born inRuhrort 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 asJohann Gottlieb Fichte,Friedrich Schleiermacher, andHeinrich von Kleist. 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, medicine, mathematics, engineering, law,political science, andnatural science, 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.[citation needed] 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.[7]
DuringWorld War II, 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 theBritish zone to receive a license.[8] The company became Walter de Gruyter GmbH in 2012.[4] In addition to its headquarters in Berlin, De Gruyter maintains offices around the globe, namely inMunich, Vienna,Basel,Warsaw,Boston, and Beijing.[9]
In October 2023, it was announced that De Gruyter would acquire the Dutch publisherBrill for €51.1 million, forming the new company De Gruyter Brill, by the second quarter of 2024.[10]
Several former publishing houses have becomeimprints of De Gruyter:
De Gruyter is one of thirteen publishers to participate in theKnowledge Unlatched pilot, a global library consortium approach to fundingopen access books.[20]
