Departures of note

Klaus Gerhard Saur was born on 27 July 1941 in Pullach near Munich, the son of Karl-Otto Saur, a former Nazi armaments official whom Hitler had named as his successor in his political testament. When his father died on 28 July 1966, the 25-year-old Klaus took over the family publishing business, Dokumentation der Technik, which produced reference works and address directories.

Saur dramatically expanded the company's scope, renaming it K. G. Saur Verlag in 1978 and internationalizing its operations with offices in New York, London, and Paris. The firm became renowned for expensive reference series sold primarily to libraries worldwide. His most ambitious project was the Deutsche biographische Enzyklopädie (German Biographical Encyclopedia), completed in thirteen volumes over just eight years starting in 1995.

In 1987, Saur sold the company to Reed International but remained as managing director until 2003. He later became managing director and chairman of Walter de Gruyter, Germany's oldest academic publishing house, from 2005 to 2008, during which De Gruyter acquired the K. G. Saur and Max Niemeyer publishers. Saur received numerous honors including honorary doctorates from universities in Marburg, Pisa, Boston, and Izhevsk, and held leadership positions in the Goethe-Institut, the German Library Association, and the German Publishers Association. He died in 2026 at the age of 85.