Justus Perthes

Justus Perthes Publishers was established in 1785 in Gotha, Germany. Justus Perthes was primarily a publisher of geographic and historic atlases and (educational) wall maps. He published Petermann’s Geographische Mitteilungen (1855-2004), after having started with publishing the French Almanach de Gotha (German Gothaischer Genealogischer Hofkalender) (1785-1944). In 2016 the publisher was discontinued. Almanacs From 1778 Johann Georg Justus Perthes worked as a bookseller in Gotha, where he founded the publishing firm 'Justus Perthes' in September 1785, when he got a fifteen-year lease for the Almanach de Gotha. This almanac was published since 1763 by Carl Wilhelm Ettinger, Gotha, and was the French version of the Almanach de Gotha. Only after the second 15-year lease contract in 1816 he was allowed to publish the almanac with the imprint of his own publishing house. The publication of the almanac as a Justus Perthes publication ceased in 1944. In later years another set of almanacs was published in the German language: Gothaisches genealogisches Taschenbuch der gräflichen Häuser(1825–1941) Gothaisches genealogisches Taschenbuch der freiherrlichen Häuser (1848–1942) Gothaisches genealogisches Taschenbuch der uradeligen häuser der in Deutschland eingeborene Adel (1900–1919) Gothaisches genealogisches Taschenbuch der briefadeligen Häuser (1907–1919). The updating of the almanacs required a lot of documentation. This was the beginning of an almost fastidious documentation and exactness that was fertile ground for the later geographic establishment. In 1911 these documents were added to the library called ‘Bücherei der Geographische Anstalt von Justus Perthes’, that contained already many maps and geographical publications. After the Second World War the Soviet army most probably destroyed the almanac archives to prevent claims of the House of Romanov on the tsarist's throne.