E. A. Seemann
On 1 December 1858 the 29-year-old Ernst Arthur Seemann announced the opening of a business entitled E. A. Seemann, Verlags- und Sortimentsbuchhandlung, verbunden mit Kunst-, Musikalien u. Antiquariatsbuchhandel (Publisher's Bookshop and Assorted Bookshop, connected with the art, musical and antiquarian book trade) in Essen, the first German publisher to focus on painting reproductions and art writing.
In 1867 it began publishing the Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft (Art Yearbook) and the following year took over the rights to Jacob Burckhardt's work.
Ernst was its sole leader from then until 1 October 1899, when he split management with Gustav Kirstein (1870–1934) and largely withdrew into private life.
The publishing house had changed location in Leipzig several times before moving into the newly constructed building on Hospitalstrasse (now Prager Strasse) in the Graphisches Viertel in the east of the city on 1 April 1912.
On its fiftieth anniversary, the publishing house was able to present around 950 colour images in a total production of 150 million art copies.
In addition to the individual sheets, each priced at one Mark, it also put together portfolios dedicated to selected artists, each with a short introductory text.
From 1900 onwards, the publisher also printed large-scale colour reproductions, which were used primarily as wall decorations and teaching materials.
From 1911, the company took over publication of the General Encyclopedia of Fine Artists from Antiquity to the Present (which had previously been taken over by the Leipzig publisher Wilhelm Engelmann), nicknamed the "Thieme-Becker" after its two editors Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker).
He soon also forced Kirstein's operation to rename itself "Meister der Farbe" (Master of Colours), though the Reich Chamber for Art (Reichskunstkammer) did give it a special permit to stay in business until 1938.
This particularly impacted the editorial staff of the "Thieme-Becker" artists' encyclopedia with its extensive library and fifty year old collection of documents - the already completed typesetting of its last volume was destroyed.
Kirstein's former half of the company, now renamed "Seemann and Co", was licensed to resume production at the war's end.
On 3 December 1946 permission was granted for the company to publish the 'Zeitschrift für Kunst und künstlerische Gestaltung'.
In the 1970s, E. A. Seemann Verlag began a new major project, the Geschichte der deutschen Kunst (History of German Art).
The first volume of the work, which was written by art historians from several universities and the Academy of Sciences of the GDR, was published in 1981.
Series such as the Kunstgeschichtliche Städtebücher, the Beiträge zur Kunstwissenschaft, the Baudenkmale issues and also the Leipziger Blätter, which has been published since the mid-1980s, grew with new editions.
With contributions by Barbara John on Max Klinger - Beethoven (2004) and Caspar David Friedrich - Chalk Cliffs on Rügen (2005) and by Roland Krischel on Stefan Lochner - The Mother of God in the Rose Bower (2006), it has also revived an old publishing tradition.
After the Seemann Henschel publishing group filed for insolvency on 1 March 2017,[2] it was taken over by Michael Kölmel, the owner of Zweitausendeins, on 1 October 2017.
