Justus Perthes (publishing company)

Justus Perthes Publishers (German: Justus Perthes Verlag) was established in 1785 in Gotha, Germany. Justus Perthes was primarily a publisher of geographic atlases. He published Petermann's Geographische Mitteilungen and also the Almanach de Gotha (Gothaischers Hofkalender). In 2010 the publisher was discontinued.

From 1778 Justus Perthes worked as a bookseller in Gotha, where he founded the publishing firm 'Justus Perthes' in 1785, in which year 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 . 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 Perthes-publication ceased in 1944.

In later years another set of almanacs was published in the German language:

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.

From 1790 onwards Justus Perthes enlarged his publisher's list with obituary lists and histories, amongst others the circumnavigation of Antonio Pigafetta and the life history of Martin Behaim. In 1814 he was joined by his son Wilhelm Perthes (1793–1853), who had been in the publishing house of Justus's nephew Friedrich Christoph Perthes at Hamburg. On Justus' death in 1816 in Gotha, Wilhelm took over the firm and laid the foundation of the geographical branch of the business for which it is chiefly famous.

In 1801 the company published its first geographical book with a map of Germany by Adolf Schieler. In 1809 they published their first atlas, but the Napoleontic wars with their ever-changing political and administrative boundaries did not form the right climate to do so, and it soon became a financial disaster. Justus Perthes, however, was not so easily daunted and soon agreed with to a proposal by Adolf Stieler to publish the soon to be famous Stielers Handatlas. Stieler proposed to create the atlas together with Christian Gottlieb Reichard (1758–1837), who later drafted part of the maps. Before the first issue of the atlas could be distributed in 1816 Justus Perthes died and was succeeded by his then 23-year-old son Wilhelm Perthes.

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