Walter de Gruyter Publishers present this book on the occasion of their 250th anniversary. It is a chronological account of how five publishers became a one company. The publisher Georg Reimer had close connections with Berlin University and the Prussian Academy of Sciences. G.J. Goschen'sche Verlagshandlung was one of the great publishers of classics, issuing the first complete authorized edition of Goethe's works and also publishing the scholarly paperback series "Sammlung Goschen". Veit & Comp. issued scientific-medical books, such as "Dornbluth", precursor of the famous "Pschyrembel". I. Guttentag was one of the leading law publishers, whose name is still remembered in the series "Sammlung Guttentag". The publisher Karl I. Trubner's strengths were linguistics and the classics. "Kluges Etymologisches Worterbuch" is still one of Walter de Gruyter's flagships. In accordance with the 20th century entrepreneurial spirit Walter de Gruyter merged these publishers in 1919.

Ernst Troeltsch received an invitation to deliver lectures on his life's work in London, Edinburgh and Oxford in March 1923 as one of the first German scholars to visit Britain after the First World War; however he died shortly before he could make the trip. The texts of the five lectures, published posthumously, carry Troeltsch's idea of a European cultural synthesis, following from his studies on "Historicism and its problems" (KGA 16). As part of the complete critical edition, this volume presents the original German lectures together with their English translations for the first time. The publication of the English book version in the year of Troeltsch's death provided the motivation for the German edition, in which the texts are reproduced in a different order (and slightly abridged in one passage). The history of the German and English dual publication gives an insight into the difficulties of German-British cultural transfer in the period following the First World War.