Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group

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Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group is a Stuttgart-based publishing holding company which owns publishing companies worldwide. Holtzbrinck has published everything from Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses to classics by Agatha Christie, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway and John Updike.

Newspapers owned by this group include: Die Zeit (Germany's largest opinion-oriented newspaper), and Berlin's Der Tagesspiegel.

Established by Georg von Holtzbrinck in 1948, the group first began as a German book club. In the 1960s, it purchased Droemer, Kindler, Rowohlt and S. Fischer Verlag, two German publishing companies. In 1985, it acquired the retail book division of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, naming it the Henry Holt Book Company. One year later, the company acquired Scientific American magazine for $52.6 million. In 1994, it purchased a majority interest in Farrar, Straus & Giroux from retiring Roger W. Straus, Jr., and just one year later, purchased a 70% majority interest in The Macmillan Group.

In March 2006, Holtzbrinck forced Tor Publishing, which is owned by Holtzbrinck, to stop making its books available as eBooks via Webscriptions because of concerns regarding the lack of DRM.

Among its publishers are:

U.S.