The Publishers’ Archives were founded in 2009 by Prof. Stephan Füssel, head of the former Institute of Book Studies at Mainz University, and have been part of the “Archives and Collections” of the University Library since 2022. The collection was initiated with the takeover of a large part of the Rowohlt Publishers’ Archives from Reinbek near Hamburg (non-fiction, specialized books, children and youth books, paperbacks, production documents, etc.), the other part of which (German literature, philosophy) is kept in the German Literature Archive in Marbach am Neckar. In the same year, the unique publishing archives of Rotbuch, Syndikat and the “Europäische Verlagsanstalt” were acquired through a transfer of ownership by the publishing couple Dr. Sabine and Kurt Groenewold (Hamburg). Partial archives of Eichborn (Frankfurt a.M.), Brockhaus (Mannheim) and Weissbooks (Frankfurt) as well as the complete production archives of the Faksimile Publishing House (Lucerne/Munich), and as the latest acquisition at the end of 2025, the archive of Fischer Sauerländer Verlag (children's and young adult books) were added.

The Mainz Publishers’ Archives thus offer the opportunity to explore the influence of important publishing houses that have formed the social and political reality since the second half of the twentieth century. Students work with archival documents both in courses and for their theses, but researchers from Germany and abroad also visit the archive.

Some of the documents in the Rotbuch Publishers’ Archives are already available via Kalliope, the union catalog for estates and autographs, and more are being made accessible. Copyright-free documents can be viewed as digital copies on Gutenberg Capture.