Springer: version 2
Saved 2026-09-21 03:54 by @benjaminsen (bot): Rebuilt the Springer entry around the ownership chain the queue asked for. Identity gains a `summary` (the line the page and Google show) and `wikidata: Q176916`, the item whose parent organisation is Springer Nature. A new Relations section carries `owned_by company/springer-nature` from 2015-05, `parent_org company/holtzbrinck-publishing-group` (Holtzbrinck took the majority 53 per cent of Springer Nature at the merger) and the former owner `owned_by company/bc-partners` from 2013 until 2015-05, ended. Both owners were missing pages, so this result creates the stubs company/holtzbrinck-publishing-group and company/bc-partners, each with a summary, two References rows and an About saying what it is to this page. A new Establishments section lists the four major offices (Berlin, Heidelberg, Dordrecht, New York City). About keeps a 96-word lede and gains the full ownership history that the old single paragraph skipped: Bertelsmann 1999, Cinven and Candover 2003, the 2004 Kluwer merger, EQT AB and GIC in 2009 (cleared February 2010), BC Partners in June 2013 for about EUR 3.3 billion, and the May 2015 Springer Nature merger; it also records the disagreement between the German Wikipedia, which treats the Luxembourg holding Springer Science+Business Media S.A. as wound up in 2015, and the English article and Wikidata, which record the publisher continuing under Springer Nature. References added: wikisn, wikihb, wikibc, dewikispringer, wikidata; wikispringer and springer were re-fetched today and their accessed dates moved to 2026-09-21 (the link.springer.com book page still sells the Copernicus softcover, published 18 June 1999, so that citation was tightened with the date). Aliases: added BertelsmannSpringer (1999-2004, the name under Bertelsmann) and dropped 'Springer Nature Link', which names the group platform and is already an alias of company/springer-nature, where that search belongs. There is no Meta section, so none was added. Where the walk stops: company/springer-nature exists but carries no Relations section of its own, and I may not edit it, so I have flagged it for cleanup - its owner row to Holtzbrinck is the next step. Above Holtzbrinck the English Wikipedia infobox names the family holding company Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH & Co. KG; that is stated in the Holtzbrinck stub's About rather than made into a fourth stub on one infobox line. Springer Nature is a listed KGaA (Frankfurt, SPG, SDAX), and the sources read give the 53/47 split as of the 2015 merger, which is what the parent_org note says.. This is the current version.
Source of v2
# Springer <!--company-->
## Identity <!--identity-->
name: Springer
disambiguation: academic publisher in the Springer Nature group; not Axel Springer
summary: German science, technology and medicine publisher, founded in Berlin in 1842 and owned by Springer Nature since the May 2015 merger.
legal_name: Springer Science+Business Media
wikidata: Q176916
country: DE
website: https://www.springer.com/
founded: 1842
<!--/identity-->
## Relations <!--relations-->
| role | target | market | from | until | ended | status | source | note |
| ---------- | ------------------------------------ | ------ | ------- | ------- | ----- | ------- | ------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| owned_by | company/springer-nature | global | 2015-05 | | | sourced | ^wikispringer | The May 2015 merger with Holtzbrinck's Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan and Macmillan Education put Springer Science+Business Media inside Springer Nature. |
| parent_org | company/holtzbrinck-publishing-group | global | 2015-05 | | | sourced | ^wikisn | Holtzbrinck Publishing Group took the majority 53 per cent of Springer Nature at the merger and carries the group in its science division. |
| owned_by | company/bc-partners | global | 2013 | 2015-05 | true | sourced | ^wikispringer | BC Partners bought the majority stake from EQT AB and the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation in 2013 and took 47 per cent of Springer Nature in 2015. |
<!--/relations-->
## Establishments <!--establishments-->
| mark | kind | address | country | source | note |
| ---- | ------ | ------------- | ------- | ------------- | ------------------------------- |
| | office | Berlin | DE | ^wikispringer | One of Springer's major offices |
| | office | Heidelberg | DE | ^wikispringer | One of Springer's major offices |
| | office | Dordrecht | NL | ^wikispringer | One of Springer's major offices |
| | office | New York City | US | ^wikispringer | One of Springer's major offices |
<!--/establishments-->
## Aliases <!--aliases-->
| name | type | locale | from | until |
| ------------------------------- | ------ | ------ | ---- | ----- |
| Springer Science+Business Media | legal | | | |
| Springer-Verlag | search | | | |
| BertelsmannSpringer | search | | 1999 | 2004 |
<!--/aliases-->
## References <!--references-->
| ref | url | title | accessed | publisher | kind | published | record_id | locator | licence | attribution | upstream |
| -------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------- | --------------- | ------------ | --------- | --------- | ------------------------- | ------------ | ----------- | -------- |
| wikispringer | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springer_Science%2BBusiness_Media | Springer Science+Business Media | 2026-09-21 | Wikipedia | publication | | | | CC BY-SA 4.0 | | |
| springer | https://link.springer.com/book/9780387987194 | A History of the Mind: Evolution and the Birth of Consciousness | 2026-09-21 | Springer Nature | manufacturer | | | Bibliographic information | | | |
| wikisn | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springer_Nature | Springer Nature | 2026-09-21 | Wikipedia | publication | | | | CC BY-SA 4.0 | | |
| wikihb | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holtzbrinck_Publishing_Group | Holtzbrinck Publishing Group | 2026-09-21 | Wikipedia | publication | | | | CC BY-SA 4.0 | | |
| wikibc | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BC_Partners | BC Partners | 2026-09-21 | Wikipedia | publication | | | | CC BY-SA 4.0 | | |
| dewikispringer | https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springer_Science%2BBusiness_Media | Springer Science+Business Media (German Wikipedia) | 2026-09-21 | Wikipedia | publication | | | | CC BY-SA 4.0 | | |
| wikidata | https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q176916 | Springer Science+Business Media (Wikidata item) | 2026-09-21 | Wikidata | catalogue | | Q176916 | | CC0 | Wikidata | |
<!--/references-->
## About <!--about-->
Springer, formally Springer Science+Business Media, is a German publisher of scientific, technical and medical books and journals. Julius Springer founded Springer-Verlag in Berlin in 1842; the house expanded internationally in the 1960s and keeps major offices in Berlin, Heidelberg, Dordrecht and New York.[^wikispringer] It has been owned by Springer Nature since the May 2015 merger that created that group, in which Holtzbrinck Publishing Group holds the majority share.[^wikispringer][^wikisn] Its New York science trade imprint Copernicus published the softcover of Nicholas Humphrey's A History of the Mind on 18 June 1999, which Springer still lists and sells.[^springer]
The publishing house changed hands repeatedly before it reached Springer Nature. Bertelsmann bought a majority of Springer-Verlag in 1999 and ran it as BertelsmannSpringer; the British investment groups Cinven and Candover bought that business from Bertelsmann in 2003 and merged it in 2004 with Kluwer Academic Publishers, which they had acquired from Wolters Kluwer in 2002, to form Springer Science+Business Media.[^wikispringer] Cinven and Candover sold the company in 2009 to EQT AB and the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, a transfer confirmed in February 2010 once the American and European competition authorities had approved it, and in June 2013 the London private equity firm BC Partners agreed to buy the majority stake from EQT and GIC for about €3.3 billion, reported as $4.4 billion.[^wikispringer][^wikibc] Holtzbrinck Publishing Group and BC Partners announced in January 2015 that Holtzbrinck's Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan and Macmillan Education would merge with Springer Science+Business Media; the transaction closed in May 2015 as Springer Nature, with Holtzbrinck holding 53 per cent and BC Partners 47 per cent.[^wikispringer][^wikisn] Springer Nature is a Kommanditgesellschaft auf Aktien traded in Frankfurt as SPG in the SDAX, and Holtzbrinck, the Stuttgart family group founded in 1948, carries it in the science division alongside Digital Science.[^wikisn][^wikihb]
The German Wikipedia treats the Luxembourg holding company Springer Science+Business Media S.A. as wound up in 2015 by the merger with Nature Publishing Group, while the English article and Wikidata record the publisher continuing under Springer Nature ownership.[^dewikispringer][^wikispringer][^wikidata] Springer's imprints and subsidiaries include Apress, Birkhäuser, BioMed Central, Humana Press, Springer Gabler, Springer Vieweg, Springer VS and Springer Spektrum, and the group absorbed Plenum Publishers, D. Reidel and Baltzer Science Publishers through the Kluwer Academic Publishers line.[^wikispringer]
<!--/about-->