Glimpses into the history of Zentralblatt MATH

We give a survey on the history of the reviewing journal Zentralblatt für Mathematik und ihre Grenzgebiete, with an emphasis on several important turning points throughout the decades. The journal was founded in 1931 by Göttingen mathematicians as the second reviewing journal in Germany, the Jahrbuch über die Fortschritte der Mathematik, established in 1868, being the first of its kind worldwide. Produced at Springer’s editorial office in Berlin, Zentralblatt aimed to overcome the drawbacks with the Jahrbuch, especially a delay in publishing the current reviews. Due to the political situation in Germany, the Zentralblatt had a history of many obstacles. After some successful years, Hitler seized power, and many editors, Jewish or political persecuted, had to leave Germany, including the editor-in-chief Otto Neugebauer. After World War II, the editorial team began to work with renewed energy, and closed the gaps caused by the war. This work was almost finished when the GDR constructed the Berlin Wall, thus separating the editors. But in spite of all obstacles, Zentralblatt was published further in a collaborative effort of both parts of Germany. The cooperation ended only in 1979, when the GDR withdrew from the contract, and the FRG founded FIZ Karlsruhe (now FIZ, Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure) with Zentralblatt as a department. With the fall of the wall in 1989, the political circumstances changed again. Some former editors of the East Berlin editorial staff were integrated into the western team. The Heidelberg Akademie, FIZ Karlsruhe and Springer continued publishing Zentralblatt, later joined by the European Mathematical Society. Finally, we describe several aspects of the technical progress in producing Zentralblatt: the steps from a printed journal towards an electronic database.