Carl Bertelsmann

Notable work and positions

C. Bertelsmann Verlag (later Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA) - Founder (1835)

Biography

Carl Bertelsmann (October 11, 1791 - December 17, 1850) was a German printer, bookbinder and publisher who founded the C. Bertelsmann Verlag publishing house in Gütersloh, Germany, around July 1, 1835, the origin of what became the global media conglomerate Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA. Born in Gütersloh two years after the French Revolution, he lost his father before age two and was apprenticed to a bookbinder; to avoid conscription into Napoleon's Russian campaign, he traveled the route from Berlin to Upper Silesia before returning to his hometown after Napoleon's defeat in 1815. Following his brother's death in 1819, he set up his own bookbinding shop, having established the first lithographic printing house in Westphalia in 1824. Aligned with the Pietist "Erweckungsbewegung," or religious revival movement, of the Minden-Ravensberg region, Bertelsmann built his publishing program around hymnals, missionary literature and devotional works, beginning with the multi-volume hymnal collection Theomele. He died in 1850, before witnessing the success of the firm's bestselling hymnbook, Missionsharfe, of which two million copies were eventually printed. Leadership of the company passed to his son Heinrich Bertelsmann, who expanded into novels, and later to descendants including son-in-law Johannes Mohn and the Mohn family, who under Reinhard Mohn transformed the firm after World War II into a major international media conglomerate spanning publishing, broadcasting, music and services.