Bartholomäus Herder

Originally destined for Holy orders, he was elaborating, while yet a student at the abbey school of St. Blasien and at the University of Dillingen, his plan of "gaining his livelihood by the dissemination of good books" as a "scholarly publisher".

Among his first publications, which were mainly of a theological and pedagogic character, were Wessenberg's Archiv für pastorale Conferenzen in den Landkapiteln des Bisthums Constanz (1802–27).

One of his most important publications was Karl von Rotteck's Allgemeine Geschichte vom Anfang der historischen Kenntniss bis auf unsere Zeiten (9 volumes, 1812–27; the 15th edition being issued by another firm), which for more than a generation was "the gospel of the educated liberal middle classes".

Subsequent to the conclusion of peace he founded an art institution for lithography, copperplate engraving, and modelling in terra cotta, in connexion with his publishing business.

In the course of time upwards of three hundred pupils were turned out from this institution, while the sumptuous illustrations and maps that were issued mark an epoch in the history of this branch of technic–especially the Heilige Schriften des Alten und Neuen Testamentes in 200 biblischen Kupfern (the Holy Writ of the Old and the New Testament in 200 biblical engravings), of which he reproduced numerous impressions by an original lithographic process, and Woerl's Atlas von Central-Europa in 60 Blättern (Atlas of Central Europe in 60 plates, 1830), which was the earliest employment of two-colour lithography.