Graphic Quarter - Music publishers

Leipzig developed into a European music metropolis of the first rank in the 19th century. The publishing industry, which was primarily located in the Graphic Quarter to the east of Leipzig's city center, played a particularly important role. The oldest institution and at the same time the oldest music publisher in the world was the Breitkopf publishing house. It was founded in 1719 by Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf.

After Gottfried Christoph Härtel took over the publishing house in 1795 (which has been called Breitkopf & Härtel ever since), close contacts were established with Ludwig van Beethoven and later with some of the main representatives of the "Romantic" generation such as Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner. The publishing house C.F. Peters is also closely linked to Leipzig's musical history. It was founded in 1800 by Franz Anton Hoffmeister and Ambrosius Kühnel as the "Bureau de Musique" and published important editions of works by Johann Sebastian Bach in the first half of the 19th century. Another institution that still exists today is the Friedrich Hofmeister music publishing house, named after its founder. Hofmeister studied with Breitkopf & Härtel and then worked in Kühnel and Hoffmeister's "Bureau de Musique". In his own publishing house, he published early works by Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck, among others.

In 1900, the Grafisches Viertel reached its peak in terms of expansion, which was unfortunately largely destroyed by the Second World War. After 1949, many publishers moved to the western part of Germany. Today, Leipzig is once again home to a branch of the Breitkopf & Härtel publishing house.

C.F. Peters and Hofmeister Verlag returned to Leipzig, where they were founded.