Encyclopaedia Brockhaus

The history of the encyclopedia dates back to 1796 , when the “Encyclopedic Dictionary with Great Attention to the Present Times” ( German Conversations-Lexikon mit vorzüglicher Rücksicht auf die gegenwärtigen Zeiten ) edited by Dr. Renatus Gotthelf 17öbel ( 17 ) was published in Leipzig . The Dictionary ... included articles on geographical and historical subjects, biographies, articles on mythology, philosophy, natural sciences, etc. Volume 1-4 (from A to R; publication "Leipzig: FA Leupold") were published in 1796 - 1800 , volume 5 (Leipzig: JC Werther) appeared in 1806 .

In 1808, Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus bought the right to publish the Dictionary ... from the bankrupt publisher for 1800 talers at the Leipzig Book Fair and completed its publication by 1811 , adding two more volumes of additions to the originally planned six (the first is Amsterdam: FA Brockhaus ; the second is Leipzig: FA Brockhaus). The editor of the last, sixth, volume was invited Christian Wilhelm Franke ( German: Christian Wilhelm Franke ) ^[1] . Realizing the importance of this enterprise, in 1812 Brockhaus launched the second edition of the encyclopedia (in 10 volumes), with corresponding changes and additions, taking on the additional role of editor of the encyclopedia ^[2] . Already this, the second edition has received universal recognition ^[3] .

In 1814, in parallel with the second, the release of the third edition began, which, like the previous one, was edited by Brockhaus himself. Both editions were completed by 1819 . In the fourth and fifth edition, Brockhaus was assisted by Dr. Ludwig Hain ( German: Ludwig Hain ), then Professor F. Gasse ( German FC Hasse ). After the death of Brockhaus in 1823, the publication was continued by his sons, Frederick and Heinrich Brockhaus, who, together with Gasse, completed the sixth and seventh editions of the encyclopedia. The editor of the eighth and ninth editions was Dr. Karl August Espe ( German: Karl August Espe ). In 1839, a pointer ( German: Universal-Register ) was added to the encyclopedia ^[1] .

Dr. August Kurtzel ( German August Kurtzel ) and Oscar Pilz ( German Oskar Pilz ) edited the tenth edition (Heinrich Edward Brockhaus ( German Heinrich Edward Brockhaus )); Heinrich Rudolf Brockhaus ( German: Heinrich Rudolf Brockhaus ) took part in the work on the eleventh edition. After Kurtzel’s death in 1871, Dr. Gustav Stockmann ( German Gustav Stockmann ) and Karl Wippermann ( German Karl Wippermann ) became editors of the encyclopedia.

The preparation of the fifteenth edition, which received the informal name of the Weimar Brockhaus ( German: Weimarer Brockhaus ), was interrupted by the First World War , and work on it began only in 1925 . The publication also included an atlas (copies of which by now have almost disappeared) with maps the size of a full page and full-color stickers. All text is in Gothic and foreign words in antiqua ; the actual recruitment process took place on line -set casting machines . Although ideologically, the editorial board was under strong pressure from Nazi ideology (which was especially evident in the last two volumes ^[4] ), with some exceptions, the quality of the materials is quite high.

It was assumed that the second edition of the fifteenth, "Great German" edition ( German großdeutsche Ausgabe ) would be completely written from pro-Nazi positions, however, the Second World War prevented the implementation of the publishing house's plans. In 1939, only one volume was published, and the next year work on the publication was stopped.

After the end of World War II, the publishing house that produced Brockhaus divided into two parts - the national publishing house Brockhaus in the GDR and the company FA Brockhaus in the Federal Republic of Germany . Further work on the encyclopedia was continued by the publishing house FA Brockhaus ^[5] , since 1984 - Bibliographisches Institut & FA Brockhaus AG.

The last, twenty-first, edition became the largest German printed encyclopedia: it contains about 300 thousand articles and over 40 thousand maps, diagrams and tables located on 24.5 thousand pages. Since the summer of 2003, 70 editors and over 1000 article authors have been working on the creation of the encyclopedia. The first volumes began to be published in the fall of 2005 ; by September 2006, all 30 volumes were fully printed. An interesting fact in the preparation of the publication was that the licensing costs for the illustrations exceeded the cost of paying for all work on the text of the encyclopedia.

In February 2008, the publisher announced that due to low sales of the twenty-first edition (including due to the high price of 2670 euros), it plans to no longer publish the encyclopedia in paper form, but to make it free and post it on the website, showing ads on which will become the main source of profit ^[6] . However, by April it had already been announced that this was canceled, and that probably “the twenty-second edition of our dictionary would still take place” ^[7] . At the end of 2008, it became known that the right to publish the encyclopedia was transferred to the Bertelsmann company, and the previous owner would continue to publish dictionaries under the Duden trademark ^[8] .

In June 2013, Bertelsmann announced plans to stop distributing the paper version of the encyclopedia from 2014, and the electronic version from 2020. At the same time, the question of the fate of the Brockhaus brand itself, the “good brand”, is considered, according to the owner ^[9] . In August 2014, sales of print media were discontinued, but the editorial update of the electronic version of the encyclopedia will continue for an indefinite period of time ^[10] .

Electronic versions

In November 2002, Brockhaus was first released electronically — on two CDs — and one DVD . This version, based on the twentieth edition of the encyclopedia, totaled 260 thousand articles and 14.5 thousand illustrations and cost more than 1000 euros . The electronic version, released in November 2005 on two DVDs and a USB flash drive (costing 1,500 euros), is based on the twenty-first edition of the encyclopedia and contains 260 thousand articles, 25 thousand images, 280 video files and 3,000 audio files. In addition, it included a three-dimensional anatomical atlas , an encyclopedia for students, an English-German dictionary and a computer planetarium . The electronic version of the encyclopedia, released in 2008, generally repeats the composition and contents of the 2005 version.

In recent years, several projects have been implemented to digitize the first Brockhaus editions: in particular, the first ^[11] and fourteenth ^[12] editions of the encyclopedia are available for reading.

Small and medium volume

In addition to the publication of the "large" Brockhaus, several series of small and medium volumes are published, the material in which is based on its data. The latest editions are:

• “Brockhaus in fifteen volumes” ( German: Der Brockhaus in fünfzehn Bänden ), second edition, 7200 s, 140 thousand definitions (2002);
• “Brockhaus in ten volumes” ( German: Brockhaus in zehn Bänden ), first edition, 7360 s, 150 thousand definitions (2004);
• “Brockhaus in five volumes” ( German: Der Brockhaus in fünf Bänden ), tenth edition, 5472 s, 125 thousand definitions (2004);
• “Brockhaus in three volumes” ( German: Der Brockhaus in drei Bänden ), fourth edition, 2592 pp., 80 thousand definitions (2006).

In previous years, other series of similar publications were published:

• “New Brockhaus. Encyclopedia in four volumes "( German: " Der Neue Brockhaus. Allbuch in vier Bänden " ), 4 volumes, 1936-1938;
• The New Brockhaus, 5 volumes, 1958-1960 (1 additional volume, 1964);
• The Small Brockhaus ( German: Der Kleine Brockhaus ), 2 volumes, 1961-1962;
• The People's Brockhaus ( German: Der Volks-Brockhaus ), 1959.

The encyclopedia gained wide popularity because it talked about the results of discoveries and research in a simple and accessible form without unnecessary details. Many publishers around the world subsequently borrowed this approach to creating encyclopedias. For example, the seventh edition of Brockhaus formed the basis of the Encyclopedia Americana (1829-1833), the first significant American encyclopedia, and the thirteenth served as the primary basis for the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary . The Dutch (Winkler Prins Geïllustreerde Encyclopaedie) and Swedish (Svenskt Konversations-Lexicon) encyclopedias were also built in the image of Brockhaus. The Encyclopedia Britannica of the eleventh edition says: “No other reference work is more useful and successful, more copied, imitated or translated than the Brockhaus encyclopedia” ^[1] .

The quality of the encyclopedia is as follows:

The Brockhaus Encyclopedic Dictionary was an exemplary edition of this kind: well-designed, scientifically and editorially prepared in good faith. Millions of readers appreciated Brockhaus’s social position, which completely excluded political and corporate evaluations from the dictionary, guided by one requirement: everything should be described and explained equally clearly and in good faith ^[13] .

However, according to a study by Stern magazine at the end of 2007, 43 of the 50 randomly selected Wikipedia entries from the German Wikipedia section were qualitatively better than similar entries in the Brockhaus encyclopedia ^[14] . At the same time, the accuracy and completeness of the articles, the speed of updating information, and the ease of reading were evaluated ^[15] .

Since the encyclopedia should serve for many years, not only the appearance of the volumes is of great importance, but also the layout quality and ease of use. Already in 1824 a two-column layout was introduced, which greatly facilitated reading , and then the use of the external margins of the page for illustrations began, which was a novelty in the printing business. In order to increase the durability of volumes, when doing bindings, instead of sewing with threads, metal wire sewing began to be used.

The bulk of the volumes of each publication has not been updated for about ten years, so almost from the very beginning of the encyclopedia’s publication, additional volumes ( German Supplementbände ) with updated data were created for each of them. In publications starting from the fifteenth, it was decided to add language dictionaries and atlases to additional volumes.

For rich readers, some publications came out in leather bindings, for example, the seventeenth (in green or brown leather) and the eighteenth. Special ("deluxe") versions of the nineteenth and twenty-first editions were published in bindings, respectively, issued by the architect and artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser and actor Armin Müller-Stahl . The twentieth edition was designed by artist and actor Andre Geller (in the spine of each volume, he placed a small transparent window with an object behind it that “personifies” this volume).

• I.V. Gudovshchikova . General foreign encyclopedias. Tutorial. - L .: Publishing house of the LGBI, 1963. - 87 p.
• RL Collison. Encyclopaedias: their history throughout the ages. 2nd ed. - New York: Hafner, 1966. - 334 p.
• JM Wells. The Circle of Knowledge: Encyclopaedias Past and Present. - Chicago: "The Newberry Library", 1968. - 56 p.
• SP Walsh. Anglo-American General Encyclopedias. A Historical Bibliography, 1703-1967. - New York: "Bowker", 1968. - 270 p.
• H. Sarkowski. Das Bibliographische Institut. Verlagsgeschichte und Bibliographie, 1826-1976. - Mannheim: "Bibliographisches Institut", 1976. - 314 S. - ISBN 3-411-01368-0 .
• KF Kister. Kister's Best Encyclopedias. A Comparative Guide to General and Specialized Encyclopedias. 2nd ed. - Phoenix: "The Oryx Press", 1994. - 506 p. - ISBN 0-89774-744-5 .
• A. zum Hingst. Die Geschichte des Grossen Brockhaus: vom Conversationslexikon zur Enzyklopädie. - Wiesbaden: "Harrassowitz", 1995. - 212 S. - ISBN 3-447-03740-7 .
• SC Awe. ARBA guide to subject encyclopedias and dictionaries. 2nd ed. - Englewood: "Libraries Unlimited", 1997. - 482 p. - ISBN 0-585-07048-2 .
• Bibliotheca lexicorum: kommentiertes Verzeichnis der Sammlung Otmar Seemann. Bearbeiten von M. Peche. - Wien: "Inlibris", 2001. - 708 S. - ISBN 3-9500813-5-6 .
• T. Keiderling. FA Brockhaus: 1905-2005. - Leipzig: Brockhaus, 2005. - 448 S. - ISBN 3-7653-0284-8 .
• Ines Prodöhl: Genehmigtes Wissen. Enzyklopädien und Lexika im "Dritten Reich". ( doctoral dissertation [1] )

• Britannica
• Great Encyclopedia of Larussa
• Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary
• Great Soviet Encyclopedia
• Great Russian Encyclopedia

• The 21st edition of the Encyclopedia on the official website of Brockhouse Publishing House (German) .
• Online version of the 21st edition of the encyclopedia (paid access) (German) .
• The history of the creation of the Brockhaus encyclopedias and lexicons on the Site of German antique encyclopedic publications (German) .
• S. Hübscher, K. Pollems-Braunfels, D. Webe. Die Brockhaus Enzyklopädie / The history of the development of Brockhaus encyclopedias and vocabulary. (German) .
• R. Dingemann: Viele Wikis sind des Brockhaus Tod - wirklich? / Is Vicki's set really the death of Brockhouse? (German) .