[3] Under the leadership and innovation strategy of Julia Jäkel,[4][5] Gruner + Jahr evolved into a publishing house producing cross-channel media products for the digital society.

[16] The impetus for the three entrepreneurs to merge was the need to achieve positive economies of scale, for example with regard to purchasing paper for the printing firms or to the distribution of magazines via reading circles.

[2] The merger was promoted mainly by Gerd Bucerius,[17] and the magazines that the shareholders brought into the company formed the basis for the joint business of Gruner + Jahr.

[25] In 1971, with a view to strengthening the management's independence, the company converted the general partner (shareholder with unlimited liability) of Gruner + Jahr into a stock corporation.

[3] Upon the retirement of Bucerius, the rights to the weekly newspaper Die Zeit were transferred to a foundation in order to safeguard the publication's business independence over the long term.

[26] An example of this was the acquisition of minority shareholdings in Spiegel Verlag and Vereinigte Motor-Verlage (today Motor Presse Stuttgart [de]) in the year 1971.

[28][29] At the end of the 1970s, the company then embarked on a period of expansion abroad: In France, the subsidiary Participations Edition Presse (today Prisma Media [fr]) was established in 1978,[30] and that same year, Gruner + Jahr acquired the Spanish publishing company Cosmos Distribuidora [es] and the US printing firm Brown Printing.

[32] To promote collaboration within the publishing house and to create space for additional staff, construction of a press building on Baumwall began in 1985.

At the time the press building was commissioned, it offered space for 2,000 employees and was thus Hamburg's largest inner-city office block.

[41] Internationally, Gruner + Jahr attracted a lot of attention by acquiring seven magazines belonging to The New York Times Company.

[42] In 1994, the company advanced to become a leading US publishing house and, for the first time in its history, generated half of its sales revenues outside of Germany.

[43][44][45] In 1995, Gruner + Jahr launched websites under the domains geo.de, mopo.de, pm-magazin.de, stern.de and tvtoday.de as one of the first professional service providers on the world wide web.

[26][46] In the years that followed, digital business models assumed an ever-greater importance: In 1997, the company launched Fireball, a search engine specially geared towards German-language content.

[53] From the end of 2000, following the bursting of the dot-com bubble,[54] Gruner + Jahr once again concentrated on content-based services, that is, on the websites of its media brands.

[75][76] The company further pursued this strategy in the years that followed and planned additional acquisitions,[77][78] but prescribed a regimen of belt-tightening in Germany and the United States.

[79] In 2004, Gruner + Jahr, in cooperation with Arvato and Axel Springer, founded the printing service provider Prinovis [de].

[80][81] One year later, in 2005, Gruner + Jahr sold off its entire US business to Meredith Corporation,[82][83] and Condé Nast acquired one individual youth magazine.

[86] Due to the global financial crisis and worldwide economic downturn, from 2007 Gruner + Jahr was forced to close several magazines.

[112] Over the past few years, Gruner + Jahr, under the leadership of Julia Jäkel, has been vastly transformed and strategically repositioned.

[115][116] By expanding digital activities and innovation in the area of traditional magazines, Gruner + Jahr's business has continued its successful expansion.

[119][6] Furthermore, in 2017, the marketing arm of Gruner + Jahr in cooperation with the RTL-subsidiary IP Deutschland and Smartclip, established the Ad Alliance, under the umbrella of which new services have been developed for advertisers and agencies.

[138] The most important German-language magazines of Gruner + Jahr in terms of popularity and scope are Brigitte, Capital, Eltern [de], Eltern family, Essen & Trinken [de], Essen & Trinken für jeden Tag, National Geographic Deutschland, P.M. Magazin, Schöner Wohnen, and Stern.

[144] Gruner + Jahr invests not only in its own platforms but also in the services of third parties: For example, a start-up fund was launched in 2015,[145][146] and in 2016, an online shop was created under the Schöner Wohnen brand.

[162] It was initially called the Hamburg School of Journalism and, in 1983, received the name it bears today, in honor of the Stern founder, Henri Nannen.

[166] The Henri Nannen School is a limited liability company,[1] backed up by the Gruner + Jahr, Die Zeit and Der Spiegel publishing houses.

[169] The affair was to go down in history as Stern's greatest ever miscalculation and caused significant damage to the public image of Gruner + Jahr and Bertelsmann.

[174] Today, the publishing of the alleged Hitler diaries is considered a textbook example of failure in the field of media ethics.