Company chronicle

From 1880: The birth of a major Berlin-based company

Berlin's first telephone book
Besides all official government documents, Reichsdruckerei printed the city of Berlin's first telephone book in 1881 under the title "List of subscribers to the telephone system" after the company received the exclusive rights to use the new "heliogravure" technology.

Art
In 1883/84, the newly established "chalcographic department" began reproducing first works of art using photomechanical processes. The reproduction of copperplate engravings and wood carvings of old masters are of such high quality that they bear a special stamp to distinguish them from their originals.

Postage stamps

In 1890, the government-owned large printing house started supplying the entire German Reich and its colonies as well as numerous foreign customers with postage stamps for which valuable gum arabic was used as the glue.

Growth
In 1892, Reichsdruckerei took over the Royal Academy of Sciences' printing office and continued to expand with the acquisition of the printing operations of the German War Ministry (1922) and Berlin's Postal Cheque Office (1929).

Patent documents
At the turn of the century, the production of patent documents, involving figures, tables and formulas which placed enormous demands on typesetting and printing processes, was one of the highest sources of turnover for the young company.

A blossoming state-owned business
Because the dyes available on the market were neither stable nor of consistent quality, Reichsdruckerei had already established its own ink-mill facility in 1905. The annual balance sheet for that year showed a surplus of around one million Reich marks ? a tremendous fortune at that time.

The finest in the art of printing

In 1908, Emperor William II. personally commissioned the artistically valuable special edition of the "Nibelungs? epic poem. The monumental edition featuring ornamental work by Joseph Sattler was produced by letterpress printing and published in a limited edition of just 200 copies exclusively for the monarch. Equally unique is the Luther Bible, graphically designed by Ludwig Sütterlin and published that same year.

The consequences of World War I
At the beginning of World War I, large quantities of coins were taken out of circulation and passed on to the government's war treasury. In order to save the precious metals used to produce money, additional "Darlehnskassenscheine" were issued in denominations of one and two marks along with large quantities of other Reich banknotes. Reichsdruckerei was increasingly forced to replace costly copperplate printing with more efficient letterpress printing. From 1922 onwards, the company employed more than 8,600 people in banknote printing alone in response to the global economic crises and growing inflation. The 57 different denominations of Reich banknotes were produced as "mass-market products" on giant rolls of paper in a rotary printing process. The Rentenmark was introduced in October 1923. The Reichsdruckerei adapted its production to this new currency.