| Ernst Wasmuth Verlag GmbH & Co. | |
| Founded: | 1872 |
| Founder: | Ernst Wasmuth |
| Country: | Germany |
| Headquarters: | Tübingen |
| Distribution: | Brockhaus Kommissionsgeschäft (Germany) Distributed Art Publishers (US)[1] RIBA Book Distribution (UK)[2] |
| Publications: | Books |
| Topics: | architecture, archaeology, art and design |
Ernst Wasmuth Verlag GmbH & Co. is a publisher based in Tübingen, in southern Germany. The themes of architecture, archaeology, art and design are the key topics of the publishing house, which was established in Berlin in 1872.
On May 1, 1872 in Berlin, Ernst Wasmuth (1845-1897) opened a bookstore devoted to architecture, which he soon expanded into publishing. Some of the books he published became classics, including works by Hermann Muthesius and Frank Lloyd Wright. Early in the company history, Wasmuth began to publish two magazines, Der Städtebau (Urban development) and Architektur des XX. Jahrhunderts (Architecture of the 20th Century).
In 1875, Ernst Wasmuth's younger brother, Emil, entered the business. He died in 1894. In 1905 the company began to publish Georg Dehio's Handbook of German Art History (Der Dehio), which was issued annually to 1928. From 1913 to 1943 Emil Wasmuth's son Günther ran the business in Berlin. Günther Wasmuth founded Wasmuth's Monatshefte für Baukunst (Monthly Architectural Bulletins) in 1914, edited by city planner and author, Werner Hegemann. From 1919 to 1926, Gunther's brother, Ewald Wasmuth, also worked at the company. He left publishing to focus on his own pursuits as a philosopher and translator of such writers as Blaise Pascal.
The publishing house was completely destroyed in an Allied bombing raid in 1943, including the company archive.[3] After World War II, Günther Wasmuth re-established the business in Tübingen while a Wasmuth Antiquarian business was opened in Berlin. The publisher continued to focus on the fields of architecture, art and archeology, to which it now added scientific works and illustrated books. Günther Wasmuth died in 1974. Ernst J. Wasmuth has been the managing director of the company since 1990.
In 1942, a branch of the company opened in Zürich under the name "Fretz & Wasmuth". The publisher produced books for the zones of occupation in Germany that could find no publisher at the time because their authors were discredited. That included, for example, the autobiography of Hans Bernd Gisevius, an avid leader of Nazi injustice, who later became a resistance member by its own account. The company prospects suffered in West Germany after 1945 to 1961 when new editions of earlier publications created larger readerships.
See main article: Wasmuth Portfolio. This was the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright's first publication anywhere in the world, as Wright had not published any of his work in his twenty previous years of activity in the United States. It contains plans and linework perspectives of buildings he designed between 1893 and 1909. It is thought that his book, published in German, had an influence on Dutch and German architects in the 1920s; a notable example is the work of the Modernist architect Willem Marinus Dudok.
Arguably one of its most enduring projects was its series of photo books published in the 1920s under the collective series name of Orbis Terrarum (The World). The company hired noted photographers to visit countries around the world and produced high quality reproductions of the finished products. The series was originally published in German (with German titles and introductory essays and with photo captions in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian). Many titles were later translated into English and French. The following list consists mostly of English language titles in this series and may be incomplete:
| Title | Year of Publication | Photographer(s) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture and landscape in China: A journey through twelve provinces | 1923 | Ernst Boerschmann | |
| Picturesque Great Britain: The Architecture and the Landscape | 1926 | Emil Otto Hoppé | Sold more than 100,000 copies. |
| Picturesque Mexico | 1925 | Hugo Brehme | An "expanded and refocused version" of Brehme's 1923 book of the same title.[4] Also published in German, French and Spanish. |
| Canada: Landscape and Lives | 1926 | Various resident photographers, coordinated by E.O. Hoppé. | Text by Louis Hamilton[5] |
| The Fifth Continent [Australia] | 1931 | Emil Otto Hoppé | "The first nationwide collective portrait of the young nation"[6] |
| Yugoslavia (Selections) | 1926 | Kurt Hielscher | |
| Das Romantische Amerika | 1927 | Emil Otto Hoppé | Sold more than 100,000 copies. An important Modernist view of America. Published as Romantic America: Picturesque United States by B. Westermann Co. |
| Egypt: architecture, landscape, life of the people (Internet Archive) | 1929 | Herbert Ricke, Ludwig Borchardt, Alfred Buckham, Lehnert and Landrock and others | Text by Ludwig Borchardt and Herbert Ricke |
| Picturesque Greece: architecture, landscape, life of the people (Internet Archive) | 1928 | Hanns Holdt and others | Text by Hugo von Hofmannsthal |
| Germany | 1925 | Text by Gerhart Hauptmann | |
| Italy (Selections) | 1925 | Text by Wilhelm von Bode | |
| Scandinavia | 1924 | Valdemar Rordam, Ernst Klein and Theodor Caspari | |
| North Africa | 1924 | Lehnert and Landrock | |
| Picturesque Palestine, Arabia and Syria: The Country, The People and the Landscape (Wikimedia Commons) | 1925 | Karl Gröber | |
| India | 1928 | Martin Hürlimann | |
| France (Selections) | 1927 | Martin Hürlimann | Introduction by Paul Valéry |
| Indochina (Selections) | 1929 | Martin Hürlimann | |
| Austria | 1928 | Kurt Hielscher | |
| The unknown Spain. Architecture, landscape, people life | 1922 | Kurt Hielscher | |