Our Portfolio

Our Portfolio

The oldest existing records are family documents from the 18th century: a diary that company founder's Carl Bertelsmann grandfather kept from 1748. In addition to similar papers there are also corporate records dating back to the 19th century, for exemple founding documents of a lithographic firm (1829), a book printing house (1835) as well as ledgers of the C. Bertelsmann publishing house (1852-1923).

Files

Our archive of files is growing constantly. It includes minutes, contracts, records of business transactions, manual deliveries, balance sheets, statistics, strategy papers, office liquidations and much more from the time after 1947 to the present day. Interviews with contemporary witnesses form a complementary library of documentation that is undergoing steady expansion.

The IHC Collection

The IHC Collection spans ten meters (32 ft) of shelf space, and focuses on the years between 1921 and 1947. It contains business papers, as well as documents from the establishment of the publishing company, and papers relating to the Bertelsmann/Mohn families.

Record Collection

Five decades worth of vinyl records, the corporate archive contains about 40,000 pieces and is a unique documentation of German and international music history after the Second World War.

Internal Publications, Posters and Promotional Material

Employee newsletters, image brochures, product catalogs and promotional materials provide interesting insights into internal processes as well as into media products from the past five decades. The development of the Lesering in the 1950s and 1960s, in particular, is vividly documented. The Corporate Archive has poster collections from the 1920s – 1950s as well as more recent press and public relations documentation.

Images and videos

About 200,000 pictures are available in digital or printed form or as negatives. The first images date back to the early 20th century, the main body covers the years from the 1950s to today. Comprising several thousand data carriers, the audiovisual archive is constantly growing.

Publisher's Archive

Carrying more than more 110,000 copies the publisher's archive unites all new releases of almost every Bertelsmann publishing house in the period from 1835 to 2000. This archive gives testament to the extensive publishing activity of Bertelsmann.