dtv Verlagsgesellschaft

The founding of the publishing house happened through the initiative of publisher Joseph Caspar Witsch, who convinced ten other publishers to publish paperbacks together. The combination was initially a company for the exploitation of publishing rights. They were to only publish the books of publishers that joined. On 30 November 1960, the company was entered in the commercial register; provisional manager was Curt Vinz. On 15 January 1961, the publisher officially started its activities and was led by Heinz Friedrich. Friedrich was the program director of Radio Bremen. From 1956 to 1959, Friedrich had been the chief editor of S. Fischer Verlag. Soon licenses from other publishers, who did not belong to the shareholders, were added on and their production began. For the design of the books, Swiss graphic designer Celestino Piatti was responsible, in which he designed a uniform typographic and graphical appearance.

Shareholders of the publishers treaty included the Artemis Verlag, C.H.Beck/Biederstein, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Carl Hanser Verlag, Hegner Verlag, Insel Verlag, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Kösel-Verlag, Nymphenburger Verlag, Piper Verlag and Walter Verlag. Heinz Friedrich was also a partner.

The first title published in 1961 was Heinrich Böll's Irisches Tagebuch. The book has since been continuously dtv- number 1 for availability. Other titles published in the start year were Die Atombombe und die Zukunft des Menschen by Karl Jaspers, as well as Nur für Leser by Friedrich Sieburg. The design of the books caused a sensation, because Piatti presented the book covers of the dtv-volumes in brilliant white and an individual image for the title was used, where as the cover for paperbacks from other publishers were mostly designed colorfully. Celestino Piatti designed around 6000 dtv book covers up until his retirement in 1993.