Schmidt Spiele
Schmidt Spiele is a German games publisher for a wide variety of games, especially German-style board games.
Founder Josef Friedrich Schmidt developed Mensch ärgere dich nicht in 1907/1908, based on antique forerunners. Five years later his new publishing firm began the game's serial production. The firm expanded their range of products to include a very wide range of games of all kinds.
In the 1980s, Schmidt Spiele published the highly successful German role-playing game Das Schwarze Auge.
Josef Friedrich Schmidt's son Franz founded his own independent enterprise named Schmidt Spiele in Nuremberg prior to the Second World War. The two enterprises maintained a shared channel of distribution, and merged in 1970. The firm's complete archives were lost in a fire in the 1970s.
Schmidt Spiele went bankrupt in 1997 and were bought up by the Blatz-Gruppe who subsequently maintained the vastly better known brand name Schmidt Spiele, publishing their own games under this name as well.
Schmidt Spiele is run as a GmbH. In 2006 their turnover was reportedly 33.5 million Euro.
