Gruner + Jahr

1965–1969

Gruner + Jahr was founded in 1965 by Richard Gruner, John Jahr, and Gerd Bucerius. Bucerius and Jahr published magazines, and Gruner ran a printing firm. The impetus for the three entrepreneurs to merge was the need to achieve positive economies of scale, for example with regard to purchasing paper for the printing firms or to the distribution of magazines via reading circles. The merger was promoted mainly by Gerd Bucerius, and the magazines that the shareholders brought into the company formed the basis for the joint business of Gruner + Jahr. The key magazines were, among others, Brigitte, Capital, Stern, and Schöner Wohnen. By 1965, they had a joint circulation running into the millions. The company Gruner + Jahr was established as a limited liability partnership, in which Gruner held 39.5%, Jahr 32.3%, and Bucerius 28.2% of the shares. By 1968, sales had grown to over 400 million Deutsche Mark. This made Gruner + Jahr Germany's largest press company at the time, next to Axel Springer.

In 1969, Richard Gruner stepped down from the company. Differences concerning the political and strategic orientation of the publishing house prompted this move. Gruner gave up his shares to his co-shareholders, Bucerius and Jahr, who for a short time each owned 50%. Both subsequently sold 25% of Gruner + Jahr to Bertelsmann. In 1970, Bucerius and Jahr transitioned into the newly created supervisory board, and management responsibility was entrusted to a five-person executive board. 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 a stock corporation. 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, and, by 1975, Bertelsmann had increased its share to a total of 74.9%. Upon the retirement of Bucerius, the rights to the weekly newspaper Die Zeit were transferred to a foundation in order to safeguard the publication's business independence over the long term.

1960s, 70s and 80s

In the 1960s and 1970s, the business of Gruner + Jahr was initially focused on expanding activities in the German market. An example of this was the acquisition of minority shareholdings in Spiegel Verlag and Vereinigte Motor-Verlage (today Motor Presse Stuttgart) in the year 1971. At the end of the 1970s, the company then embarked on a period of expansion abroad: In France, the subsidiary Participations Edition Presse (today Prisma Media) was established in 1978, and that same year, Gruner + Jahr acquired the Spanish publishing company Cosmos Distribuidora and the US printing firm Brown Printing. In the 1980s, additional shareholdings and subsidiaries were acquired abroad, for example in Great Britain.

By the mid-1980s, the employees of Gruner + Jahr were spread throughout various buildings along Hamburg's Outer Alster Lake. To promote collaboration within the publishing house and to create space for additional staff, construction of a press building on Baumwall began in 1985. The company's headquarters remain at that address to this day. The property on which the press building was built is situated between St. Michael's Church and the Speicherstadt. It was previously owned by the City of Hamburg and has floor space of 22,000 m². Construction work was largely completed in 1989, and the first employees moved into the press building one year later. The building project cost roughly 300 million Deutsche 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.

1990s

Following the German reunification in 1989/90, Gruner + Jahr was instrumental in building up a free press in the new German states. For example, the company founded the Dresdner Morgenpost and, shortly thereafter, the Chemnitzer Morgenpost daily newspaper. In 1991, Gruner + Jahr acquired the Sächsisches Druck- und Verlagshaus, where the Sächsische Zeitung is published. The company also acquired a stake in Berliner Verlag – initially 50% in 1990, then 100% from 1992 on. Among its leading newspapers are Berliner Zeitung and Berliner Kurier. Internationally, Gruner + Jahr attracted a lot of attention by acquiring seven magazines belonging to The New York Times Company. 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.

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. In the years that followed, digital business models assumed an ever-greater importance: In 1997, the company launched Fireball, a search engine specially geared towards German-language content. This was followed by Paperball in 1998, a search engine specializing in news. An e-mail provider (Firemail) was also part of the portfolio. In the year 2000, Gruner + Jahr incorporated Fireball and its related brands into Lycos Europe. In exchange, Gruner + Jahr received a stake in the company, the IPO of which was imminent. From the end of 2000, following the bursting of the dot-com bubble, Gruner + Jahr once again concentrated on content-based services, that is, on the websites of its media brands.

Initiatives and crisis

At around the turn of the millennium, Gruner + Jahr sold off several regional daily newspapers. In 1999, the company divested itself of the Zeitung zum Sonntag, a free Sunday newspaper. The deficit-ridden Hamburger Morgenpost was sold in 1999 to Hans Barlach and Frank Otto. In addition, Gruner + Jahr divested itself of several regional editions of the Sächsische Zeitung. At the same time, the company established Financial Times Deutschland, a new Germany-wide business newspaper. This initiative was one of the most ambitious newspaper projects of the time. In the year 2000, Gruner + Jahr purchased Inc. and Fast Company, two leading business magazines.

In 2002, Gruner + Jahr sold the Berliner Verlag publishing company to the Georg von Holtzbrinck publishing group. Due to the concentration in the Berlin newspaper market, some media commented critically on the transaction. In 2003, Gruner + Jahr sold off parts of its newspaper business in Eastern Europe to the Ringier group.

Magazines

The most important German-language magazines of Gruner + Jahr in terms of popularity and scope were Brigitte, Capital, Eltern, Eltern family, Essen & Trinken, Essen & Trinken für jeden Tag, National Geographic Deutschland, P.M. Magazin, Schöner Wohnen, and Stern. Since 2013, all publications from Gruner + Jahr were clustered into eight units called "Communities of Interest." Both print and digital cross-media content were created there.

Digital brands

Up from 2000, Gruner + Jahr had significantly increased its digital activities. In its core markets, digital sales account for more than a third of total sales. Gruner + Jahr invested in own platforms but also in the services of third parties: For example, a start-up fund was launched in 2015, and in 2016, an online shop was created under the Schöner Wohnen brand. The ad-tech company AppLike, established in 2016, was spun off in 2017 thanks to its strong growth.

Controversy

In 1983, the company was clouded by the affair surrounding the alleged Hitler diaries. 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. 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. For example, the magazine's publisher, Henri Nannen, was forced to resign, even though he personally had done nothing wrong. Today, the publishing of the alleged Hitler diaries is considered a textbook example of failure in the field of media ethics.

In 2013, Gruner + Jahr announced it would be handing over the forged Hitler diaries to the German Federal Archives. To date, this has not occurred; the forged Hitler diaries are still archived in the Gruner + Jahr publishing house.