After World War II, in the German Democratic Republic (GDR/DDR) the Leipzig branch of the publishing house was transformed into Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Geest & Portig in 1947 and 1951.
Between 1953 and 1983, another Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft seeing itself as the legal successor of the original company existed in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG/BRD) in Frankfurt am Main and Wiesbaden.
Today, there are two German publishing houses claiming to stand in the tradition of the Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, AULA-Verlag and AKA-Verlag, although legally they are new and independent foundations.
[6] On 4 April 1906,[8] Jolowicz then founded the Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft with Gustav Rothschild (procurator at the Fock bookshop) und Paul Werthauer, who left in 1914 already.
The publishing house became one of the best-known scientific publishers,[6] publishing well-known journals such as the Zeitschrift für physikalische Chemie (Journal of physical chemistry, 1887 introduced by Wilhelm Ostwald and Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, taken over from Verlag Wilhelm Engelmann in Leipzig, in 1920), the Handbuch der Experimentalphysik (Handbook of experimental physics) by Friedrich Harms [de] and Wilhelm Wien (26 volumes with a total of 25000 pages and 9700 images, 1926 to 1937, meant as competitor to Handbuch der Physik [de] by Springer-Verlag), the Handbuch der Radiologie (Handbook of radiology) (6 volumes, 1913 to 1934), Rabenhorst's Kryptogamen-Flora (Rabenhorst's cryptogam flora), Bronns Klassen und Ordnungen des Tierreichs (Bronn's classes and orders of the animal kingdom), Ergebnisse der Enzymforschung (Results of enzyme research) and Ergebnisse der Vitamin- und Hormonforschung (Results of vitamin and hormone research).
From 1921, Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft also published a well-known series of new editions of scientific classics Ostwalds Klassiker der exakten Wissenschaften (taken over from Verlag Wilhelm Engelmann in 1919).
Leo Jolowicz's son-in-law Kurt Jacoby (born 1893 in Insterburg; died August 1968 in New York) was also involved in the expansion of the publishing house.
[9] His son Walter and his son-in-law Kurt Jacoby were sent to a concentration camp in 1938, but were then able to leave Germany and emigrated via Russia, Japan and other countries to New York, USA, where they arrived in 1941 and 1942, respectively, and founded the publishing house Academic Press.
[10] After World War II, Geest and Portig re-established the Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft in the Soviet occupation zone on 25 February 1947,[11] and later received a renewed license from East Germany on 26 October 1951.
In addition, Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Geest & Portig also published numerous university textbooks in the GDR (such as the Grundriss der anorganischen Chemie (Basic plan of inorganic chemistry) by a collective of authors, which reached a circulation of 100000).
The remaining heiress Gertrud Margarete Portig was pushed out of the company entirely by 1972 when the publishing house became the property of VEB Gustav Fischer Verlag.