In 1878, Egmont H. Petersen opened his own print shop in
Copenhagen, which formed the foundation of the publishing firm. Its first big success was the family magazine,
Hjemmet, in 1904, which still exists today in
Scandinavia. For the opening of its large printery building, the
Gutenberghus, Egmont received the title of royal court printery in 1914. In 1948, the publishing company managed to secure the rights to
Disney comics for several European countries. In 1951, a German subsidiary was founded,
Ehapa. In the field of comics, it sold Disney works (translated by Dr.
Erika Fuchs) and later also
Asterix and
Lucky Luke. In 1991, the
Reiner Feest Verlag was bought out. The first manga of the publishing house appeared in February 1994 under this label, with
Appleseed. Further manga followed, but the great breakthrough did not occur until 1997/1998 with
Sailor Moon. In 2000, Ehapa published manga directed toward Japanese readers for the first time, with
Wedding Peach. In October of the same year, the firm Egmont Manga & Anime (EMA) was founded. Since then, the head of the publisher has been
Georg F.W. Tempel, who had already been responsible for the previous manga publications as the former chief editor for trend subjects at Ehapa. EMA is the first German manga publisher to have an advisor directly on location in
Japan.
Weiß Kreuz, the first anime, followed in 2001. It was produced in cooperation with
Anime-Virtual under the label of
IKASU. In 2002, EMA was again integrated with Ehapa, but the label was kept. There was a merger of several companies from the Ehapa concern, as well as a fusion with Egmont vgs, in 2003. This resulted in EMA and the
Ehapa Comic Collection (ECC) moving to
Cologne. ECC became responsible for the comic publications of Ehapa in the book trade and it has also been led by Georg F.W. Tempel since the fusion with vgs. The Ehapa magazine department, which also publishes the
Micky Maus magazine, is still located in
Berlin. From 2003 until 2005, EMA in cooperation with the organisation,
Animexx e.V., organised the annual
anime convention,
Connichi, in
Kassel. The semi-annual program preview is the
Shinkan. == References ==