C. H. Beck, established in 1763, is one of the great names - and one of the richest in traditions - among German publishing companies. With more than 7,000 available titles, including many electronic publications, with about 50 professional journals and an annual production of more than 1,000 new publications and new editions, the C. H. Beck publishing company also ranks in the top tier in terms of quantity among German publishers of books and magazines. 450 employees work at the headquarters in Munich alone; a branch in Frankfurt serves as editorial offices for most of the law journals. At these two locations, over 100 scientific or journalistic editors support more than 4,500 current authors. The former headquarters location in Nördlingen, a small medieval town in southern Germany, is now home to the company-owned book and magazine printing facility, a composing facility and a multimedia department with another 400 employees. Also located in Nördlingen is the publisher's distribution center, which takes care of delivering all of the company's products. The "Schweitzer Sortiment" chain of spezialiced bookshops, situated in several major German towns, is yet another element of the group firms. The publishing company furthermore maintains an office in the heart of Berlin, the new capital of the German Federal Republic.
C. H. Beck is one of Germany's oldest publishing firms. The present owners and chief executives are the brothers Dr. Hans Dieter Beck and Dr. h.c. Wolfgang Beck, who represent the sixth generation of direct descendants of the company's founder, Carl Gottlob Beck. In 1763, C.G. Beck acquired a printing firm that had already been operating in Nördlingen for 130 years and added a publishing company and a bookstore. The initials of his son and successor, Carl Heinrich Beck, survive in the company's present name C. H. Beck. The fourth-generation publisher Oscar Beck relocated the company to Munich in 1889, but the printing facility remained in Nördlingen. In the middle of the 19th century, the company began to expand into a diversified scientific publishing firm that always continued to maintain a small literary program as well. For several decades, C. H. Beck was a leading theological publisher. Later, theology moved into the background behind other scholarly subject areas that are shaping the company's program even today and whose origins can be traced back into the early 1800s, such as history and the study of antiquity, literary science and - last but not least - law.
The current activities of the publishing company are divided into two subject areas: The Law - Taxes - Economics branch under the direction of Dr. Hans Dieter Beck, and the literature - nonfiction - science branch under the direction of Dr. h.c. Wolfgang Beck. At the moment you are on the homepage of the law and economics branch.
The foundation of the second German Reich in 1871 became a significant factor in the expansion of the legal publications program at C. H. Beck. Shortly before the turn of the century, this event led to the enactment of several important laws for all of Germany, such as the Code of Civil Procedure of 1876, the German Civil Code (BGB) of 1896 and the German Commercial Code of 1897. In the first half of the 20th century, the publication of the Schönfelder Consolidated Statutes (starting in 1935), the Palandt BGB Commentary (first published in 1938) and the Neue Juristische Wochenschrift (Legal Weekly Review, since 1947) established a family of standard works that continues to shape the public image of the publishing firm today. The company also got off to a very early start in electronic publications and produced its first legal CD-ROM in 1989.
Today C. H. Beck supports every conceivable form of publication in the field of law, large multi-volume works as well as modestly priced brochures, continuously updated loose-leaf publications as well as CD-ROMs or professional journals, and since the middle of 2001 also a comprehensive online database. In all these areas, the company's policy is to meet the demand for legal literature in all areas of jurisprudence including tax laws, whereas the focus has always been put on the practical aspects of the legal profession, especially on commentaries and reference books.
The publishing company is a partner in Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag (dtv), which publishes Beck's legal texts (among others) in economical paperback editions, and is also a shareholder in specialized bookstores in various large German cities. In addition, C. H. Beck owns majority stakes in a number of legal publishing firms in Germany and other countries. In 1993 it established the publishing firms C. H. Beck Warszawa (Warsaw) and C. H. Beck Praha (Prague), which now rank among the leading legal publishers in their countries. A few years later the company acquired majority stakes in the Swiss publishing company Helbing & Lichtenhahn in Basel and in the Romanian publishing house ALL Beck in Bucharest, now C.H. Beck. The diverse international activities are rounded out by the company's membership in Law Publications in Europe (LPE, a legal publishers' association) and by numerous co-publications with legal publishers around the globe. In Germany, C. H. Beck had significantly expanded its product line in the economics as well as the legal program segments in 1970 by acquiring an interest in Franz Vahlen publishers. Since 1999, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft in Baden-Baden and since 2004 Kommunal- und Schul-Verlag in Wiesbaden, have also become a member of the C.H. Beck group of companies, which presently employs some 1,700 employees in all.
Postal address: P.O. Box 40 03 40, 80703 Munich, Germany
