KAUPERTS knows Berlin.
be helpful, be groundbreaking, be berlin.
by Roman Kaupert
Even when it comes to our professional lives, we all have goals we want to reach. For me, these goals were shaped by the things that both of my grandfathers did in their lifetimes for and in Berlin. When I was a kid, both of them were my heroes; I wanted to be just like them. For 11 years, my grandfather on my mother’s side was an extraordinarily active borough president. He’s the reason why I’m so interested in politics and why I graduated with a degree in political science from FU. My grandfather on my father’s side published the classic Berlin guidebook that still bears his name. His book quickly became one of the indispensible tools for helping people find their way through the maze of this large city.
When I was born in Wedding in 1977, my grandfather the Berlin publisher Dr. Walter Kaupert had already been dead for 21 years. The only thing I really had in common with his truly groundbreaking directory of Berlin’s streets and offices was the name. But, in countless conversations, I was asked time and again about the little blue book that over the years had become such a helpful tool for civil servants, police officers, taxi drivers, journalists, lawyers, accountants, business people, movers and anyone who’d recently moved to Berlin. The book itself eventually came to be published by a publishing group in Munich and printed in Slovenia. I didn’t think that was the way things should be, and I had always wanted to bring back the rights to Berlin.
While I was still at university, I started working on the side because I already had 100 marks in debt on my bank account. I did everything from being a stock clerk to being the managing partner of a communications agency that grew to be very successful. It was a path that required a lot of hard work – and I managed it all without one bit of financial support. Then, after reading an article in one of Berlin’s large daily newspapers, I ended up making contact with the publishers in Munich. In early 2008, I reacquired the rights to the Kauperts guidebook, which was still the only one of its kind for Berlin.
I started up the company “kaupert media gmbh” and was able to keep all the Berlin employees and even to create some new jobs as well. Now the street guide is manufactured at a printing house in Berlin. On December 1, 2008, the new 2009 edition of KAUPERTS appeared. It was the first edition that my team and I were responsible for. At that point, we also launched a new website that we developed to allow people – and people of my generation as well – to find locations in our city even faster.KAUPERTS has been a part of Berlin for over 60 years. But only recently has it truly come back home. Since its first edition, it has been a resource for everything having to do with Berlin. And that’s why it will also continue to be an ambassador of our city.
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