George Brumder

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George Brumder (1839 - 1910) was a prominent Milwaukee German-language publisher and businessman.

George Brumder immigrated to the United States, from Breuschwickersheim, Alsace-Lorraine, France, in 1857, at the age of 18. In 1864, he and his wife, Henriette, bought a small bookstore on Water Street in Milwaukee. Later that year Brumder added a small printing department and began publishing books for the Lutheran Church.

In 1873 he began publication of Die Germania, a German Lutheran newspaper with Republican leanings, which became influential and widely circulated. In 1891, Brumder made the newspaper a daily, and in 1897 he united it with the Abend Post. After 1906, he controlled all of the Milwaukee German newspapers. He also owned German language papers in Chicago and Lincoln, Nebraska, as well as in several Wisconsin towns. He was president of the Germania National Bank (1903- 1910) and of the Concordia Fire Insurance Company (1897-1909).

In the 1890s Brumder built his famous office building in downtown Milwaukee, known as the Germania Building, and later the Brumder Building (135 W. Wells St., at the intersection of N. 2nd St. and N. Plankton Ave.). By the time of his death in 1910, after 53 years in Milwaukee, George Brumder had built his business into the nation's largest and most influential German-language publishing company.

The Brumder publishing company covered an extremely wide range of topics in its publications, including farming, medicine, cooking, nature and wildlife, religious themes, Bibles, children's literature, historical literature and fiction.

The Max Kade Institute at the University of Wisconsin owns over 180 Brumder publications, which are available for viewing there.