History
In 1949, Heinz Heise [ Wikidata ] founded the publishing house named after him in Hanover-Badenstedt. [2] The company's first product was an address book for the town of Bünde, later joined by the telephone directory for Einbeck. Gradually, other cities and regions were added to the product range. In addition, Heise expanded the program to include non-fiction topics, such as manuals on law. By 1960, sales had risen to over one million marks.
In 1972, Heinz Heise handed over the management of the company to his son Christian [ Wikidata ]. Under his leadership, a magazine for electronics and technology topics, was created. The first issue of the computer magazine c't appeared in 1983, [3] followed by the professional magazine iX in 1988. [4] Both publications are still around today. Later, the IT sector was further expanded with the acquisition of the Heidelberg-based Dpunkt Verlag. [5]
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Heise expanded into the states of the former Eastern Bloc. In 1992, the company took over the long-established Hinstorff [ Wikidata ] publishing house in Rostock. [6] Having previously invested in regional radio stations, Heise participated in the founding of Radio 21 [ Wikidata ], a private radio station in Lower Saxony, in year 2000. Additionally, Heise invested in digital business models with partner publishers: Das Örtliche [ Wikidata ] and Das Telefonbuch [ Wikidata ] appeared online for the first time. The news portal heise.de was created and supplemented by Telepolis and other channels. The MIT magazine Technology Review, whose German-language version has been published by Heise since 2003, was widely recognized. [7]
In recent years, price comparison portals have taken on greater importance at Heise. The company has stakes in billiger.de, [8] guenstiger.de and geizhals.at . [9]
Publications
Heise publishes Das Örtliche and Das Telefonbuch as well as the Gelbe Seiten in joint editorial and publishing partnership with Deutsche Tele Medien. The media are published in printed form, as a web application and for mobile devices. In addition to a simple entry, Heise offers small and medium-sized companies a wide range of online marketing services. [10]
The IT news portal heise.de is leading in German-speaking countries. [11] It also includes the media brands c't, iX, Make, Mac & i, [12] Technology Review, heise Autos, TechStage and Telepolis. [13] [14] The company uses the brands both online and for magazines, as well as for events, especially congresses, conferences, seminars and workshops, including Heise Adacemy.
The Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA, commonly known as Bertelsmann, is a German private multinational conglomerate corporation based in Gütersloh, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is one of the world's largest media conglomerates and is also active in the service sector and education.
c't – Magazin für Computertechnik is a German computer magazine, published by the Heinz Heise publishing house.
fli4l is a Linux distribution, actively developed by German developers since 2000. The projects main task is to provide a small Linux system that turns almost every machine into a router. The distribution can run from a floppy disk and was created with the aim of simple configuration and support for older hardware.
Telepolis is a German Internet magazine, published by the Heinz Heise Verlag since the beginning of 1996.
The Rhenus Group is an international logistics service provider based in Holzwickede, Germany. The company has branches in Europe, India, North, Central and South America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. It is a subsidiary of German Rethmann Group.
Bunte is a German-language weekly celebrity gossip magazine published by Hubert Burda Media. The first edition was published in 1948 under the name Das Ufer. Under the leadership of Hubert Burda, Bunte developed into a modern popular magazine. In 2014, Bunte was the 11th most popular media brand in Germany, with 10.57 million monthly users. After Patricia Riekel stepped down, Robert Pölzer took over as Editor-in-Chief in July 2016.
Roland Berger is an international management consultancy headquartered in Munich. With 2,400 employees and 52 offices in 35 countries, it has a presence in all major industrialized and emerging markets. As the market leader in Germany, Roland Berger is the only European consultancy with an international presence and is one of the leading representatives of its industry. Annual sales in 2018 were around EUR 600 million, the most successful financial year to date.
Arcor is the former name of the fixed phone line and Internet business of Vodafone D2 GmbH, a German subsidiary of telecommunications company Vodafone. It is the second-largest provider of fixed phone lines in Germany after Deutsche Telekom. Its name changed on 1 August 2009 after Vodafone completed acquisition of the company. Its headquarters were in Eschborn near Frankfurt. It is one of the few telecommunications companies in Germany to operate an ISDN network that is independent of the incumbent provider Deutsche Telekom.
Hubert Burda Media Holding is a German media group with headquarters in Offenburg. It originated as a small printing business, founded by Franz Burda Snr in Philippsburg, in 1903.
Focus is a German-language news magazine published by Hubert Burda Media. Established in 1993 as an alternative to the Der Spiegel weekly news magazine, since 2015 the editorial staff has been headquartered in Germany's capital of Berlin. Alongside Spiegel and Stern, Focus is one of the three most widely circulated German weeklies. The concept originated from Hubert Burda and Helmut Markwort, who went from being Editor-in-chief to become publisher in 2009 and since 2017 has been listed in the publication's masthead as founding editor-in-chief. As of March 2016 the editor-in-chief of Focus was Robert Schneider.
Gruner + Jahr is a publishing house headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. The company was founded in 1965 by Richard Gruner, John Jahr, and Gerd Bucerius. From 1969 to 1973, Bertelsmann acquired a majority share in the company and gradually increased it over time. After 2014, the company was a fully owned subsidiary of the Gütersloh-based media and services group. Under the leadership and innovation strategy of Julia Jäkel, Gruner + Jahr evolved into a publishing house producing cross-channel media products for the digital society.
Arvato is a global services company headquartered in Gütersloh, Germany. Its services include customer support, information technology, logistics, and finance. The history of Arvato goes back to the printing and industry services division of Bertelsmann; the current name was introduced in 1999. Today, Arvato is one of eight divisions of Bertelsmann, the media, services, and education group. In 2016, Arvato had about 68,463 employees and an overall turnover of 3.84 billion euros.
Erik Möller is a German freelance journalist, software developer, author, and former deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), based in San Francisco. Möller additionally works as a web designer and previously managed his own web hosting service, myoo.de. As of 2022, he was VP of Engineering at the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
BMG Rights Management GmbH is an international music company based in Berlin, Germany. It combines the activities of a music publisher and a record label.
Prestel Publishing is an art book publisher, with books on art, architecture, photography, design, fashion, craft, culture, history and ethnography. Lists range from museum guides, to encyclopaedias, art and architecture monographs to facsimile volumes and books for children.
Comdirect Bank Aktiengesellschaft was the third-largest German direct bank and was based in Quickborn, Schleswig-Holstein. Founded by the Commerzbank in 1994, the company went public in 2000. The Commerzbank integrated the company on November 1, 2020.
4Players is a German online magazine that provides news and reviews of video games and related content. Established in August 2000, 4Players is owned by the Hamburg-based company 4Players GmbH, an indirect subsidiary of the Marquard Group conglomerate.
LOTTO24 is a reseller of state and charity lotteries on the Internet. The German company brokers tickets for various state lotteries under the LOTTO24 and Tipp24 brands. In addition the company has launched two charity lotteries of their own to promote educational projects. LOTTO24 is a company of the ZEAL Group. LOTTO24 shares were traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange from July 2012 to August 2021.
The mc Group is an international public relations network and advertising agency. Established in 1993 in Cologne, Germany, the company has been headquartered in Berlin since the year 2000.
Geizhals, also known under the English name Skinflint Price Comparison is a feature and price comparison website, focusing on, but not limited to, the German speaking area. The product filters are managed by an editorial board. For notebooks it has 150 filters, and offers for each product type up to more than 100 different offers from online stores.
