Prestel Publishing

Prestel Publishing is an art book publisher, with books on art, architecture, photography, design, fashion, craft, culture, history and ethnography. Lists range from museum guides, to encyclopaedias, art and architecture monographs to facsimile volumes and books for children. Founded in 1924 by Hermann Loeb in Frankfurt, Germany, originally for the publication of old master prints, the company is named after Johann Gottlieb Prestel, the famous 18th-century German engraver. Prestel has its head office in Munich, and a branch in London. It is owned by Penguin Random House. In 1774 German engraver and painter Johann Gottlieb Prestel founded an art dealership in Nuremberg, which developed into an art gallery and was relocated to Frankfurt in 1783. At the end of the 19th century, one of his heirs converted the business into an auction house, which the antiquarian Albert Voigtländer-Tetzner acquired in 1910. In the 1920s, Prestel Verlag was finally separated from the rest of the company. The art historian Hermann Loeb bought the publishing holdings and had Prestel-Verlags GmbH registered in the commercial register on 18 July 1924. In 1933 the Nazis forced the Jewish Loeb to sell the publishing house to one of his employees.