Life
Born in Ruhrort in 1862, Walter de Gruyter took a position with Reimer Verlag in 1894 in Berlin. By 1897, at the age of 35, he had become sole proprietor of the hundred-year-old company then known for publishing the works of German romantics such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Heinrich von Kleist. De Gruyter later acquired four other publishing houses – Göschen, Guttentag, Trübner, and Veit – and, in 1919, merged them into one: Vereinigung wissenschaftlicher Verleger Walter de Gruyter & Co. , located in Genthiner Straße in Berlin, where it is still headquartered today. The four publishers specialized in philosophy, theology, German literature, medicine, mathematics, engineering, law, political science, and natural science, and it is for many classics in these fields that de Gruyter is still known today. By the time - he died in 1923 - Walter de Gruyter had created one of the largest modern publishing houses in Europe. [1]
He was married with Eugenie Müller (1869–1950). Both of his sons Hans (10 August 1889– 27 February 1917) and Georg (28. May 1895–7 February 1916) died in World War I. De Gruyter's son-in-law, Herbert Cram (1893–1967), who married Clara de Gruyter(born 16 September 1891), succeeded him in the management of the company and it continues to be family-owned. His daughter Elle de Gruyter married German lawyer Karl-August Crisolli (1900-1935) and later German publisher Burkhard Meier (1885-1946).
