200 years ago, Joseph Meyer founded the Bibliographisches Institut in Gotha, and his son moved it to Leipzig in 1874. The publishing house was known for its inexpensive editions of classics, Meyer’s Groschenbibliothek der Deutschen Classiker für alle Stände, encyclopedias such as Mayer’s Konversationslexikon, and as publisher of the Duden, Brehm’s Tierleben, and the BI-Hochschultaschenbücher.

Leipzig was a very special place for Meyer! In his essays on the our world and our universum, published as Meyer’s Universum (1837), he states

There are names in world history that stand like signal beacons in the Sahara of the past, and when the breath of time blows everything away and the dust of millennia buries everything in night and oblivion, they show researchers the path that humanity has traveled. One such name is Leipzig. Like Marathon and Salamis, it is the heir to eternity

In our tour we will explore what is left of this glory — and of the fame of its publishing houses.