Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised May 16, 2026

Holtzbrinck Publishing Group

Holtzbrinck Publishing Group is a German publishing company headquartered in Stuttgart, that owns publishing companies worldwide. Through Macmillan Publishers, it owns one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies.

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Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
Parent companyVerlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH
StatusPrivate
Founded1948 (1948)
FounderGeorg von Holtzbrinck
Country of originGermany
Headquarters locationStuttgart, Germany
DistributionWorldwide
Key peopleStefan von Holtzbrinck (CEO)1

Björn Waldow (CFO)1

Filmon Zerai (COO)1
Publication typesBooks, Newspapers, Academic journals, Magazines
ImprintsSee below
Official websiteholtzbrinck.com

Holtzbrinck Publishing Group (German: Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck) is a German publishing company headquartered in Stuttgart, that owns publishing companies worldwide. Through Macmillan Publishers, it owns one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies.

In 2015, it merged most of its Macmillan Science and Education unit (including Nature Publishing Group) with Springer Science+Business Media, creating the company Springer Nature. Holtzbrinck owns 53% of the combined company.23

History

The history of Georg von Holtzbrink's publishing activities during the Nazi years 1933-1945 has been controversial.45 After World War II, Georg von Holtzbrinck, a former member of the Nazi party,6 reestablished a group in 1948, beginning as a German book club. In the 1960s, it purchased the German publishing companies Droemer, Kindler, Rowohlt and S. Fischer Verlag. In 1985, it acquired the retail book division of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, naming it the Henry Holt Book Company. One year later, the company acquired Scientific American magazine for $52.6 million. In 1994, it purchased a majority interest in Farrar, Straus & Giroux from retiring Roger W. Straus, Jr. A year later, it purchased a 70% majority interest in Macmillan Publishers, and then the remaining shares in 1999. In 2001, Pearson sold the Macmillan trademark in the United States (gained with the acquisition of Simon & Schuster educational and professional division, which included the assets of former Macmillan Inc.) to Holtzbrinck.7

In March 2006, Holtzbrinck forced Tor Books, which is owned by Holtzbrinck, to stop making its books available as e-books via Baen Ebooks because of concerns regarding the lack of digital rights management (DRM). The policy was later changed and Tor titles became available as DRM-free e-books in 2012. The Tor UK label in Britain (and hence the EU) does the same. The company also received a good deal of attention when it bought the then leading German social networking platform StudiVZ in January 2007.

Holtzbrinck has total annual sales of 1.99 billion euros (as of 2024); 29% of sales are in Germany and 53% in North America. It had 2024 earnings before taxes of 293 million euros, and a total of 14,000 employees.8

The current chairman of the group is Stefan von Holtzbrinck. Jon Yaged is CEO of Macmillan, which represents the group's trade publishing activities, primarily in the US.9

Subsidiaries and imprints

German newspaper Die Zeit in newsstand source ↗

The publishing group is divided into four business areas:10

  1. Science: This area comprises scientific publications and research-related services, particularly through Springer Nature and Digital Science.
  2. Consumer Books: The books segment includes the group’s trade publishing activities, including Macmillan Publishers, Pan Macmillan, and the German Holtzbrinck book publishers.
  3. Education: The education segment is represented by Macmillan Learning, which develops educational content and digital learning solutions.
  4. News Media: This area comprises the group’s journalistic activities, which are bundled in DIE ZEIT Publishing Group.

In Germany:

In the United States:
Using the Macmillan name:

Former in the United States:

  • Renaissance Media - was based in Los Angeles when its catalogue was acquired by Holtzbrinck in 200113
    • Renaissance Books - assets and back catalogue fully merged into Holtzbrinck's St. Martin's Press, which formerly provided the book printing service for Rennaissance13
    • Audio Renaissance - renamed Macmillan Audio when Holtzbrinck switched to Macmillan name in the United States

In the United Kingdom:

See also

See also

Notes and references

  1. "Holtzbrinck: Consolidated financial statements for the financial year 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2024" (in German). German Company Register (Unternehmensregister). 13 March 2026. Retrieved 20 April 2026.
  2. Bray, Chad (15 January 2015). "Publisher of Nature and Scientific American to Form Joint Venture". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 January 2016.
  3. Carpenter, Caroline (6 May 2015). "Completed merger forms 'Springer Nature'". The Bookseller. Retrieved 14 January 2016.
  4. Landler, Mark (14 October 2002). "Another German Publisher Mulls Its Wartime Past". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  5. O'Toole, Fintan. "Empire of publishing built on barbarism". The Irish Times. Archived from the original on 16 October 2017. Retrieved 15 January 2022. The founder of the firm, Georg von Holtzbrinck, was until the early 1930s an impoverished student who sold books door to door. He joined a Nazi student group in 1931, two years before Hitler came to power. He became a member of the Nazi Party in 1933, and stayed loyal to it until the end of the war.
  6. "Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck". mediadb.eu. Archived from the original on 28 October 2011. Retrieved 15 January 2022. Denn Georg von Holtzbrinck sei „ein wichtiger Akteur" in der Buchhandels- und Verlagsgeschichte im Dritten Reich gewesen. Er war Mitglied der NSDAP, aber nicht als fanatischer Nazi in Erscheinung getreten.
  7. Bookseller, Allbusiness.com
  8. "Holtzbrinck: Consolidated financial statements for the financial year 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2024" (in German). 13 March 2026.
  9. Lauren, Brown (3 May 2022). "Yaged named chief executive of Macmillan as Weisberg steps aside". The Bookseller.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  10. "Our Group - Holtzbrinck". 20 April 2026. Retrieved 20 April 2026.
  11. https://www.fischerverlage.de/verlage/fischer_krueger, 24 April 2020
  12. https://www.fischerverlage.de/verlage/fischer_scherz, 24 April 2020
  13. Maughan, Shannon (1 October 2001). "Holtzbrinck Acquires Renaissance Media". Publishers Weekly. Vol. 248, no. 40. Archived from the original on 8 March 2017. Retrieved 25 May 2025.
External links