[1] Born in Berlin the son of Kommerzienrat [de] Friedrich Jacob Alfred List (1829-1882), banker and co-founder of Allgemeine Deutsche Credit-Anstalt [de], and his wife Christine Marie Louise, née Simon, started out in Göttingen But then he started the career of his grandfather, the Berlin publisher Jacob Alfred List (1778-1848), who studied agriculture and became a bookseller at the publishing house Schall & Grund, Berlin.
The main author was Heinrich Harms, under whose direction wall maps, atlases, geographical textbooks and educational books were produced.
His son Paul Walter List (1899-1989) joined the business in 1919, took over the management in 1929 and ran the publishing house, which he continued in Munich after 1945,[2] until 1972.
The Leipzig-based List publishing house was taken over in 1945 under fiduciary administration and in 1977 was incorporated into the Verlagsgruppe Kiepenheuer Leipzig, which operated until 1990.
[citation needed] Paul List Verlag published the complete works of Knut Hamsun.