Justus Perthes (publishing company)

They published the Almanach de Gotha (German Gothaischer Genealogischer Hofkalender) from 1785 to 1944, and Petermann’s Geographische Mitteilungen from 1855 to 2004.

After the Second World War, the Soviet army destroyed the almanac archives to prevent claims of the House of Romanov on the tsarist's throne.

In 1816, on Johann Georg Justus' death in Gotha, Wilhelm took over the firm and laid the foundation of the geographical branch of the business.

[1] In 1809 they published their first atlas,[2] but with the changing political and administrative boundaries due to the Napoleonic wars meant that it was not a financial success.

Shortly after Stieler's death in 1836, Perthes posthumously published his 25-part map of Germany and surrounding countries at a scale of 1:740,000.

Shortly after the death of Stieler, his map collection was bought by Perthes and added to the company library.

[6] For the second part of his atlas Johnston required the cooperation of Heinrich Lange and August Petermann, who both moved to Scotland, in 1844 and 1845 respectively.

This, plus the fact that his son August was not engaged by Perthes in 1854, made Berghaus decide to break off his relationship with the publisher.

While teaching at the Erfurt military school Emil von Sydow (1812-1873) was taken up by the problems of how to improve geographical educational.

While cartographers like Friedrich von Stülpnagel and Christian Bär drew the outlines for the maps, Sydow painted in the colours green for lowlands and brown-red for higher areas, a system still in use today.

To emphasize the contrast between text and atlas when describing landscapes he wrote in his introduction: "Even when text has to divide the subject of geography in several parts and to isolate it for systematic education in independent levels, it is preferably the task of the map to neutralize this division and to fuse the independent parts together into a wholeness".

Cartographical review of Europe), that was published twelve times between 1857 and 1872 in Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen and contained 357 pages in total.

In London he met with many geographers and explorers, a task which was made easier because he was fluent in German, French and English.

But at the intercession of Adolph Müller, who from 1857 onwards managed the firm of Perthes, in 1855 he started the journal Mittheilungen aus Justus Perthes' Geographischer Anstalt über wichtige neue Erforschungen auf der Gesammtgebiet der Geographie von Dr. A. Petermann.

As an example, the Ergänzungsband II of 1863 contained the Karte von Inner-Afrika (Map of Inner Africa) in 10 parts,[15] in which were drawn all the known routes of explorers between 1701 and 1863.

Petermann was not only a geographer/cartographer, who could distil from many sources a realistic image of the world, but he also was a very good taskmaster who could transfer his skills to his pupils.

These included Ernst Debes [de] (1849–1923), Bruno Hassenstein (1839-1902), Hermann Habenicht(1844–1917), Fritz Hanemann (1847–1877), Otto Koffmahn (1851–1916), Christian Peip (1843-1922) and Arnim Welcker (1840–1888).

They put the crafts and lessons that Petermann had learned with Berghaus into practise, which resulted in unmatched cartographic images.

The style – map lettering, relief representation, better engraving and colouring – became more uniform and influenced all new atlas publications of Perthes.

During his time as editor Petermann received much support from Ernst Behm (1830–1884), who succeeded him after his untimely death as editor-in-chief.

In 2010 the business premises and the accompanying land Justus-Perthes-Straße 1-9 and Gotthardstraße 6 Archived 2012-03-15 at the Wayback Machine were bought by the municipality of Gotha.

This was the end of the 225-year history of the publishing house; but the Perthes archives, which survived intact, remain available to scholars and interested parties.

Before that time he had followed an apprenticeship in the publishing house of Justus's nephew Friedrich Christoph Perthes at Hamburg.

From the moment that Bernhardt Perthes started to lead his firm it transformed from an ordinary publisher into an industrial business, as the production became too large to leave this to subcontractors.

To underline this ambition he changed the name of his firm into 'Justus Perthes Geographischer Anstalt', and also started to publish many wall map series and school atlases in foreign languages.

To support this program he hired amongst others August Petermann, Ernst Behm, Hermann Berghaus and Carl Vogel.

During this period land was bought to provide accommodation for the departments for engraving, printing of copper plates and electrolytic reproduction.

Because the documentation for the almanacs and the number of geographic publications and maps had grown to such a volume, a new library was opened in 1911 measuring some 500 m2.

Bernhard Perthes complained to Hermann Wagner that PGM had become a scientific and academic journal under the editorship of Supan, resulting in a decrease of subscriptions of 2,810 in 1884 to 1,330 in 1908.

[22] Until 1980/84 the Darmstadt company was led by Gerhard Vaeth and Werner Painke (cartography, a pupil of Hermann Haack), until Stephan Justus Perthes was ready to take over the management.