The Imprimatur GmbH was a company which owned the Frankfurt newspaper Frankfurter Zeitung

Frankfurter Zeitung

The Frankfurter Zeitung was a German language newspaper that appeared from 1856 to 1943. It emerged from a market letter that was published in Frankfurt...

 (FZ) from 1930 until it was shut down in 1943. During the period that FZ was owned by the Imprimatur, the prestigious newspaper was in financial distress situations and brought the company heavy losses.

The Imprimatur was founded in 1900 by Rudolf and Hermann Ullstein. In 1924, they sold the company to two investors: Carl Bosch

Carl Bosch

Carl Bosch was a German chemist and engineer and Nobel laureate in chemistry. He was a pioneer in the field of high-pressure industrial chemistry and founder of IG Farben, at one point the world's largest chemical company....

, chairman of the board of IG Farben

IG Farben

I.G. Farbenindustrie AG was a German chemical industry conglomerate. Its name is taken from Interessen-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG . The company was formed in 1925 from a number of major companies that had been working together closely since World War I...

, and Dr. Hermann Hummel

Hermann Hummel

Hermann Hummel was a German chemist and politician in the Republic of Baden. He was a member of the DDP.- Early life and career :...

, who also served on the supervisory board of IG Farben. Six years later, Bosch sold his shares, leaving Hummel as the sole shareholder of the Imprimatur.

The company was later sold to the prominent banking family of Leopold Sonnemann. Although the paper was initially protected by the Nazis, as it provided a convenient medium for propaganda, it was shut down by Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 in 1943. The company subsequently went defunct.