About Us

Nomos emerged from August Lutzeyer Verlag, which has been based in Baden-Baden since 1953.
which has been based in Baden-Baden since 1953. In the years after the Second World War, this publishing house had established itself as a specialist legal publisher with a particular focus on text editions in loose-leaf form. Of central importance was the collection “Das
German Federal Law”. Since the adoption of the Treaties of Rome in 1957, European law was also documented. In 1963, the August Lutzeyer
publishing house was taken over by the partners of Suhrkamp Verlag, Siegfried Unseld and the
Swiss brothers Reinhardt. Following Suhrkamp’s takeover of Insel Verlag shortly before, the latter were interested in the publishing house’s own printing works, which specialised in thin printing, even of small editions, but also saw the up-and-coming scholarly publishing house as a good capital investment.

About a year after the takeover, the publishing house was renamed Nomos Verlag. The name of the publishing house is derived from the ancient Greek word for “law” (νόμος). From the beginning, however, the loose-leaf collection “Das deutsche Bundesrecht” (German Federal Law) and other text collections such as the “Handbuch des Europäischen Rechts” (Handbook of European Law) also contained numerous explanations, from which the publishing house gradually built up a broad programme of commentaries and handbooks. In addition, an extensive academic programme of dissertations, post-doctoral theses and other monographs as well as anthologies developed. The thematic focus was initially on public law and European and international law on the one hand, and on political science, European politics and international relations on the other. Gradually, other subject areas were added, such as communication and media studies, sociology or economics. By the turn of the millennium, Nomos had established itself as one of the leading academic publishers in the field of law and social sciences.

At the end of the 1990s, the shareholders at the time decided (probably also against the background of a reform of inheritance tax law) to sell Nomos Verlag. In 1998 Nomos was initially sold to the (scientific) Springer Verlag. Shortly afterwards, Springer in turn was taken over by Bertelsmann – and Bertelsmann immediately sold Nomos to the shareholders of the Munich-based C.H. Beck Verlag, Hans-Dieter and Wolfgang Beck. They still own the publishing house today. Thomas Gottlöber is the managing director.

Since 2009, Nomos Verlag has taken over several smaller academic publishers with a programme focus on the humanities and social sciences: The first was the acquisition of Reinhard Fischer Verlag in 2009, which was integrated into the Nomos Verlag programme as “Edition Reinhard Fischer”. Since 2015, Edition Sigma has belonged to Nomos Verlag, which was also integrated into the main programme. The first publishing house to continue as its own brand and imprint was Tectum Verlag (2017), followed by Ergon Verlag (2017), der Academia Verlag (2018), Rombach Wissenschaft (2020) der Verlag Karl Alber (2022) und der Georg Olms Verlag (2023).

In 2012, the Nomos eLibrary was launched as a reliable platform for digital academic literature in the German-speaking world. Before long, additional renowned partner publishers joined and contributed their high-quality programmes. A unique partnership began to take shape: the range of content available to readers, libraries and organisations expanded, while our partners — regardless of their size or structure — benefited from our reach, technical expertise and personal service.

Over the years, these partnerships became the foundation of the Nomos eLibrary’s success. Our vision was clear: to create a shared platform that represents all publishers equally, simplifies access to knowledge and shapes the future of digital publishing.

In 2025, that vision will become reality: Inlibra will launch as the joint platform of the Nomos eLibrary, the beck eLibrary and the VDI Verlag-eLibrary. With more than 100 partner publishers, Inlibra is set to become Germany’s largest platform for digital academic information.