History

After Georg Siebeck retired as publisher at the end of 2014, the press was jointly managed by Franz-Peter Gillig and Henning Ziebritzki; from 2018 to 2022, Henning Ziebritzki was the sole managing director.

Since autumn 2022, shortly before the publishing house’s 222nd anniversary, Ove Kähler was appointed to continue his predecessors’ commitment to serving Mohr Siebeck's dedication to excellence.

Mohr Siebeck is characterised today by its growing international author and customer portfolios, the upgrading of its program with the addition of new editors, as well as the digitalisation of processes and products.

The press has now developed its own eLibrary to distribute electronic content worldwide. Specialisation in scholarship has been matched by an ongoing broadening of our publishing program. The mainstays of theology, philosophy, law, and economics established in the 1930s have intertwined in recent years to create the following spectrum:

Theology - Jewish Studies - Religious Studies

History - Classics - Philosophy

Law - Economics - Social / Cultural Studies

The proprietors of the H. Laupp'sche Buchhandlung, Paul Siebeck (1855-1920) and his brother-in-law J. Gustav Kötzle (1840-1900), bought the publishing house J.C.B. Mohr in 1878. Between 1880 and 1899, Siebeck operated the business alone from Freiburg, while Kötzle oversaw the running of the H. Laupp'sche Buchhandlung in Tübingen. Paul Siebeck named his enterprise The Academic Publishing and Bookselling Business of J.C.B. Mohr, Proprietor Paul Siebeck.

Following the style of the times, he soon shortened it to J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) and established the business as a specialist academic publisher with a focus on works of liberal theology, cultural protestantism, the south west German New Kantians and Max Weber-hewn national economists.

During this time, three new journals were introduced to the program. In 1844, the first FinanzArchiv (FA) appeared, followed by the Archiv des öffentlichen Rechts (AöR) in 1886, and, in 1891, the Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche (ZThK) joined the ranks as very first theological journal.

The sovereign of the state, the Lord of Baden, bestowed upon Paul Siebeck the Order of the Zähringer Lion. The heraldic animal was soon adopted as the publishing house's emblem and has further evolved into today's company logo. In the beginning, the lion brandished a flag bearing the motto artibus ingenuis: dedicated to the noble arts.

In 1895, Paul Siebeck came into contact with Max Weber, who was to become the publisher's most important advisor and whose Complete Works (MWG) still serve as one of Mohr Siebeck's corner stones.

The year 1899 saw Paul Siebeck return to Tübingen where he headed both Mohr and Laupp until 1920. During this time, the first edition of theology's standard lexicon Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (RGG), edited by Friedrich M. Schiele and Leopold Zscharnack, appeared.

On the 1st of August 1801, August Hermann (1776-1803) founded an eponymous book-trading business in Frankfurt. Jacob Christian Benjamin Mohr (1778-1854), whose name was to be synonymous with the books until 1996, bought the Hermann'sche Buchhandlung in 1804 and under his name, operated the publishing, printing and book-selling enterprise.

In 1805, he was invited by the university in Heidelberg to set up an academic publishing house which he then ran successively with two partners, Johann Georg Zimmer (1776-1853) and Christian Friedrich Winter (1773-1858), managing it alone from 1822. Mohr closed down the Frankfurt branch in 1810/11.

Around 1818, one of the first academic journals – the Archiv für die civilistische Praxis (AcP) - was introduced to the publishing program. Published under the name Mohr & Zimmer were works of the Heidelberg Romantics, such as Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the cover picture of which – a horn of plenty or a small postilion, horn held jauntily aloft – appeared repeatedly right up into the 1970s as the company's emblem.

In 1842, J.C.B. Mohr's son Ernst Christian Mohr (1811-1890) took over responsibility for the book assortment and became sole proprietor, while his brother Georg continued at the helm of the in 1845-founded Heidelberg printing press. The year 1844 saw the launch of the Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, which is still being published today under the title of JITE – the Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics.

Between 1856 and 1878, Ernst Christian shared management duties with his brother Carl Mohr (1817-1897). The publishing house was then sold in 1878 to the owner of the Tübingen-based H. Laupp'schen Buchhandlung.

Tübingen's H. Laupp'sche Buchhandlung
(Jakob) Heinrich Laupp (1780-1836) was apprentice and employee of Johann Friedrich Cotta and from 1810 onwards oversaw the Cotta'schen Sortimentsbuchhandlung in the town; and although Cotta moved his publishing house to Stuttgart, the bookstore remained in Tübingen. In 1816, Laupp bought the business, transferred it into his own name and began publishing academics works, written principally by Tübingen scholars. On his death in 1836, the business was passed over to his widow Luise Friederike Laupp (1798-1882).

The Leipzig bookseller Hermann Siebeck (1816-1877), who was Heinrich Laupp's son-in-law, headed the firm from 1839, becoming in 1840 co-owner first with Luise Laupp and then from 1847 with her son Rudolf Laupp (1818-1866). The year of Rudolf's death saw Siebeck become sole proprietor. He led the business right up until his death in 1877, whereafter leadership was handed on to Paul Siebeck and J. Gustav Kötzle.