About P.M. History

P.M. History

P.M. History is the monthly German-language history magazine that calls itself "Europas größtes Monatsmagazin für Geschichte" — Europe's biggest monthly magazine for history. Launched in 1998 as the history offshoot of the popular-science P.M. magazine, it appears monthly with multithematic issues covering the full breadth of human history, with a special emphasis on the classical high cultures and European history. Known for its generally understandable reading stories illustrated with numerous photos and images, it sold 34,199 copies (IVW Q4/2019). Since 1 August 2023 it has been published by the Munich publishing house GeraNova Bruckmann, after 25 years at Gruner + Jahr in Hamburg.

Overview

P.M. History is a monthly popular-science history magazine in German, published by the PM Wissen Media GmbH — part of the GeraNova Bruckmann Verlagshaus GmbH in Munich. Each issue treats a historical theme in the magazine's signature form: the generally understandable reading story, richly illustrated with photos and images, covering the entire bandwidth of human history with a particular focus on the classical high cultures and European history. The 2024–2026 issue list illustrates the programme: the German colonies' trail from Africa to the Pacific, the Enlightenment's Rousseau-Kant-Frederick, Rome's high imperial age from Hadrian to Elagabal, the pyramids of Egypt-China-Central America, the Fugger-Hanse-East India merchant empires, Versailles as absolutism's stage, medieval everyday life, the industrial revolutions, the Habsburgs, Alexander the Great's successors, the great explorers, Romans in Germania, the emigrants, the pharaohs' power, the Reconquista, Pompeii, the forgotten realms, the mummies, the discovery of America, Prussia's great rulers, medicine's milestones, the Silk Road, the Celts, the red experiment of communism, the pirates' brutal business, the turning points from Hiroshima to the iPhone, the Normans. The magazine's subtitle — Europe's biggest monthly magazine for history — is the market claim. The print ISSN is 2510-0661; the website is pm-magazin.de within the P.M. brand family.

History

P.M. History was launched in 1998 as the history spin-off of P.M. — Peter Moosleitners interessantes Magazin, the popular-science magazine developed from 1976 for Gruner + Jahr and first published on 4 October 1978. The P.M. brand's history is the German popular-science magazine's history: founded by Gerhard "Peter" Moosleitner (1933–2015), whose name the magazine carries because the G+J board member Rolf Poppe wrote "Peter Moosleitners interessantes Magazin" on a slip of paper — "G.M." would have risked a trademark dispute with General Motors. The history offshoot took the brand's formula — the interesting, the extraordinary, the earlier — into the past: the generally understandable reading stories that made P.M. the German popular-science magazine. For 25 years P.M. History appeared in the Hamburg publishing house Gruner + Jahr. The RTL Deutschland takeover of Gruner + Jahr — announced August 2021, completed 11 January 2022 for 230 million euros — reshaped the portfolio: the core magazines (Stern, Geo, Brigitte, Gala, Schöner Wohnen, Häuser, Couch) remained, while the P.M. brand was sold. On 1 August 2023 P.M. History went to the Munich publishing house GeraNova Bruckmann — the specialist house for history, military history and modelling — where it continues monthly under the PM Wissen Media GmbH. The move was the logical homecoming: the generalist Hamburg group's history magazine found its place in the Munich house that lives for history — the military-history, aviation and railway titles, the modelling magazines, the specialist book programme. The issue list through 08/2026 documents the uninterrupted monthly publication under the new owner: the Prussian rulers, the medicine milestones, the Silk Road, the Celts, the red experiment, the pirates, the turning points, the Normans — the multithematic rhythm continuing, monthly, from Munich.

Coverage and Content

The magazine's programme is the multithematic history issue: each month a new theme from the full bandwidth of human history. The classical high cultures: Egypt's pyramids, Rome's high imperial age, the pharaohs Hatshepsut-Tutankhamun-Ramses II, Alexander's successors, the Celts as Europe's mysterious superpower. The European history: the Enlightenment, Versailles, the Habsburgs, Prussia's Hohenzollern, the Normans, the Reconquista, the emigrants' "Ciao Heimat!", the red experiment of DDR-Soviet Union-China. The world history: the Silk Road from Genghis Khan to Marco Polo, the German colonies, the merchant empires, the discovery of America from Erik the Red to Vespucci, Pompeii under the ash, the mummies of the world. The turning points: the industrial revolutions, medicine's milestones from X-rays to antibiotics, the 80 years from Hiroshima to the iPhone, the pirates' brutal business. The magazine's form — the reading story with the numerous photos and illustrations — makes the scholarship accessible: the generally understandable narrative that the P.M. brand pioneered. The formula descends from Gerhard Moosleitner's 1979 editorial: interesting is, first, everything somehow extraordinary — extraordinarily large, old, beautiful, terrible, creepy, mysterious — and second, everything that was earlier. P.M. History applies the formula to the past: the extraordinarily large (the pyramids, the empires), the extraordinarily terrible (the assassinations, the pirates), the mysterious (the forgotten realms, the mummies) — and everything that was earlier, which is everything. The deputy editor-in-chief Ralph Kreuzer represents the editorial continuity through the ownership change. The magazine's readership is the history-interested general public: the readers who want the past as the well-told story, monthly, in the illustrated magazine.

Organization and Ownership

P.M. History is published by the PM Wissen Media GmbH in Munich, part of the GeraNova Bruckmann Verlagshaus GmbH — the Munich specialist publishing house for history, military history, aviation, railways and modelling (whose portfolio includes the history magazines and the modelling titles). The 1 August 2023 sale from Gruner + Jahr to GeraNova Bruckmann moved the P.M. brand — P.M., P.M. History, P.M. Fragen & Antworten, P.M. Logik Trainer — from the Hamburg RTL group to the Munich specialist house. The deputy editor-in-chief is Ralph Kreuzer. The commercial model is the popular-science monthly's: the IVW-audited sold circulation of 34,199 copies (Q4/2019), the kiosk and subscription sales, the history-interested advertisers — the book publishers, the museums, the travel operators, the documentary channels. The P.M. brand family — the parent P.M. magazine, the history, Q&A and logic-trainer offshoots — shares the Munich publishing infrastructure. The magazine's market claim — "Europas größtes Monatsmagazin für Geschichte" — positions it against the competitors: Geo Epoche (discontinued in the 2023 G+J restructuring), Damals, G/Geschichte. The print ISSN is 2510-0661. Detailed current circulation figures beyond the 2019 IVW data are not publicly confirmed in the sources available.

Digital Presence

The magazine's website is pm-magazin.de, the P.M. brand family's portal, with the P.M. History section carrying the current issues and the subscription offers. The German Wikipedia's "Liste der Ausgaben von P.M. History" documents every issue from the launch through 08/2026 — the complete bibliography of the magazine's themes, from the German colonies to the Normans. The GeraNova Bruckmann webshop handles the subscriptions and the back issues. The P.M. brand's digital extensions — the TM Wissen successor formats, the podcasts — frame the history magazine within the popular-science family's digital strategy. In the German history-magazine landscape P.M. History occupies the popular-monthly pole: alongside the discontinued Geo Epoche, the Damals and G/Geschichte monthlies, P.M. History is the multithematic illustrated monthly — the reading stories with the photos, the classical high cultures and the European history, from the 1998 Gruner + Jahr launch to the GeraNova Bruckmann present, monthly, "Europas größtes Monatsmagazin für Geschichte," for the readers who want the past well told, every single month, without fail, since 1998, from Munich to the history readers, month after month.