Justus Perthes

http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n50081959

wikipedia, accessed 10/18/2017 Justus Perthes Publishers (German: Justus Perthes Verlag) was established in 1785 in Gotha, Germany. Justus Perthes was primarily a publisher of geographic atlases and wall maps. He published "Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen and also the Almanach de Gotha (Gothaischer Hofkalender). In 2016 the publisher was discontinued.

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 de:Gothaischer Hofkalender. 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.

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.