Reclam

His son Anton Philipp completed his apprenticeship as a book printer and bookseller and borrowed money to purchase the Literarisches Museum, a lending library in Leipzig-Mitte, Grimmaische Strasse.

[citation needed] On 1 October 1828 Anton Philipp Reclam founded his own publishing house, first named Verlag des literarischen Museums.

However, the liberal leaning tone of his publications earned him a sales ban in the countries of the Austrian Empire and a prison sentence by a Leipzig court for publishing a German translation of Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason (Das Zeitalter der Vernunft).

From 9 November 1867, when all these rights ended, Reclam was able to publish German Enlightenment authors like Goethe, Schiller, Lessing and many others, without needing to pay any royalties, and thus sell them for lower prices.

[2] In 1912 Reclam became the first company to introduce book vending machines, designed by Peter Behrens, which soon became a great success and were found at train stations, hospitals and army barracks all over Germany.

[3] During Nazi rule in Germany, Reclam was forbidden to publish books by Jewish authors, including Heinrich Heine and Ferdinand Lassalle, and works of 'politically unreliable' writers like Thomas Mann, Stefan Zweig, and Franz Werfel.

[citation needed] After the partition of Germany in the aftermath of the war, the publishing house was divided after its owner, Ernst Reclam, was partially dispossessed in Leipzig, then part of the Soviet occupation zone.

In September 1947, Reclam established a subsidiary in Stuttgart American occupation zone, later part of West Germany), which finally became the new main office in 1950.