Edition Tintenfass brings linguistic diversity to light!

We are a small, boutique, independent publishing house based in Neckarsteinach, Hesse, Germany. Our family-owned business began publishing in November 2001. Since then, we have been sharing our passion for languages and cultures with readers around the world.

With every new book, we celebrate the linguistic diversity of our world and are committed to the recognition, strengthening, and preservation of minority, endangered, and indigenous languages. Our catalog includes over 500 titles in more than 240 foreign, regional, minority, and historical languages, as well as (not only German) dialects. With our monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual books, our readers can learn new languages and dialects, refresh their knowledge, and—for example—remember “how Grandma used to talk.” Languages from every continent are represented. In addition to books in dialect, you’ll find titles in languages of the Global South. In some cases, these represent the very first written record of a language; in others, they may be the last chance to document a dying language. When selecting our titles, we focus on visually striking classics with high recognition value and themes such as otherness, tolerance, and friendship. We also take great pleasure in more unusual editions (hieroglyphs, Morse code, binary code, the Afro-Bolivian Little Prince).

Titles in fiction, poetry, regional studies, religion, and specialized linguistic literature round out our cross-genre portfolio. Between 20 and 30 new titles are published each year. The initial print run for each title is usually between 300 and 500 copies. The typesetting is handled by a typesetting studio in Heidelberg, and printing is primarily carried out by a medium-sized printing company in Upper Franconia—exclusively in Europe and with climate certification (including for reforestation projects). We are happy to support selected social and nonprofit projects through our publishing work. We have become known worldwide for our books and our selection of linguistically skilled and compelling authors, translators, and illustrators. We often recruit them from the academic community. Texts and translations are linguistically sound (in some cases peer-reviewed) and guaranteed not to be AI-generated. Our authors are often award-winning language policy activists. Many have become friends, and one project often leads to others.

Our name and logo are inspired by Heinrich Hoffmann’s Struwwelpeter. We believe that classics of children’s literature should be read with an awareness of their historical context, and we regret that many of these works—which were celebrated as progressive at the time of their publication for introducing a new form of illustrated children’s book—are not given the recognition they deserve. As part of the German publishing landscape, we increasingly see ourselves as having a responsibility toward democracy and cultural diversity. We are proud that our publishing program contributes to these goals.