How It All Began – Carl Bertelsmann, Model Citizen

At the old church square Carl Bertelsmann founded his publishing company in 1835.

Ever since C. Bertelsmann Verlag was established in Gütersloh in 1835, the history of the city and company have been inextricably intertwined. This connection is rooted in the personal history of the founding publisher.

Carl Bertelsmann was not merely a good entrepreneur, he was also a model citizen. His success was based on his firmly held principles: faith, thrift, discipline, and a willingness to take risks. During the occupation of Gütersloh by Napoleon’s armies from 1808 to 1813 as well as in later years, Carl Bertelsmann, a printer by training, volunteered his services for public administration. Here, he encountered some harsh social realities: the misery of the poor, the elderly, and the children. When his own business fortunes rose in the early 1830s, he began to give back some of his wealth to society.

Guidance and Sustenance in Times of Rapid Change

Espousing this basic attitude, Bertelsmann, a devout Protestant, joined the Minden-Ravensberg revivalist movement. He was friends with a key representative of the movement, Pastor Johann Heinrich Volkening, whose sermons were printed and later published by Bertelsmann.

Carl Bertelsmann went beyond merely subscribing to ideals, he also acted on them by organizing a community welfare program, supervising the building of a new vicarage, and in 1848 sponsoring the construction of what was to become Gütersloh’s Evangelisch-Stiftisches Gymnasium (Protestant secondary school).

Bertelsmann’s Extended Family – the “Ganzes Haus”

Carl Bertelsmann extended this idea of ”doing unto others as ye would have them do unto you” to his publishing employees as well. As at many other small and medium-size companies, the early modern tradition of the ”Ganzes Haus“ (extended family) was also practiced at Bertelsmann. The extended family included not only relatives, but all employees as well. For instance, apprentices actually lived in the publishing company owner’s house.

The owning family’s solicitousness towards sick employees, the support provided at weddings, and the help offered with regard to professional advancement and recognition given for special achievements are based on a wide range of motivations and influences. The company’s post-war founder Reinhard Mohn is fully in the tradition of his great-great-grandfather: compassion and conduct driven by a sense of social responsibility form the roots of a corporate culture that continues to thrive to this day.