Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group is a Stuttgart-based publishing giant which owns publishing companies worldwide. Holtzbrinck has published everything from Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses to classics by Agatha Christie, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway and John Updike.

Newspapers owned by this Group include: Die Zeit (Germany's largest opinion-oriented newspaper), and Berlin's Der Tagesspiegel.

Established by Georg von Holtzbrinck in 1948, the group first began as a German book club. In the 1960s, it purchased Droemer, Kindler, Rowohlt and S. Fischer Verlag , two German publishing companies. In 1985, it acquired the book division of Holt, naming it the Henry Holt Book Company . One year later, the company acquired Scientific American magazine for $52.6 million. In 1994, it purchased a majority interest in Farrar, Straus & Giroux from retiring Roger W. Straus, Jr., and just one year later, purchased a 70% majority interest in The Macmillan Group.

Among its publishers are:

U.S.

• Bedford/St. Martin's
• Farrar, Straus & Giroux
• Henry Holt and Company
• Palgrave Macmillan
• Picador
• St. Martin's Press
• Tor Books
• W.H. Freeman
• Bedford, Freeman and Worth Publishing Group
• Worth Publishers

Germany

• S. Fischer Verlag
• Wolfgang Krüger
• O.W. Barth
• Fretz & Wasmuth
• Droemer, Kindler, Rowohlt

U.K.

• The Macmillan Group