It was best known for its eponymous encyclopedia and other renown bedrock brands for lexical functional grammar such as Duden, Meyers or the Harenberg Lexikon-Verlag and Kunstverlag Weingarten.

The publicly traded company was eventually divested through fundamental asset-stripping after rights of the renown Brockhaus brand, including rights for its online presence and Meyers Online, were sold off to Bertelsmann subsidiary Arvato, following a stock take-over through majority stakeholder Cornelsen Verlag.

The remaining book publisher and legal successor, which has completely withdrawn from any lexical functional grammar or reference-works business fields, now operates under the name Bibliographisches Institut GmbH.

[1] Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus founded his publishing house in 1805 in Amsterdam, then part of the Batavian Republic.

Its East German successor published reference works and geographical and ethnographic texts.