With its new owners, KABE-Verlag - the publishing company - managed to survive World War II. After the company came under state ownership in 1953, the owners fled to Goeppingen and rebuilt their company there. KABE and LIGHTHOUSE, which were both founded by Paul Koch, worked closely together in the field of production and development of stamp stock books and pre-printed albums, as well as with the purchase of material. In the process of doing this, they even agreed on a mutual share in profits. When, in the nineties, the question of a successor for the KABE publishing company was unable to be solved from within its own ranks, merging both companies seemed like the best thing to do. Both publishing companies, that had once been founded by Paul Koch, have been united since 1997.

LEUCHTTURM and KABE were originally mainly involved in the development of pre-printed stamp albums, thereby creating the basis for a solid framework as the partner to collectors from around the world. Even today, the LIGHTHOUSE specialised editorial office is deemed exemplary in planning pre-printed albums. The production and sales programme was continually extended. Consequently, LIGHTHOUSE is still the only - and also the largest worldwide – manufacturer of stock books in Germany today. An extensive range of coin accessories were included over the course of the last decades. Nowadays, LIGHTHOUSE is the world’s leading company in collecting systems for stamps and coins. In addition, LIGHTHOUSE has now been offering a continually expanding range of filing and archiving systems for several years which are distributed via office supplies and stationer’s.

This is all achieved with our workforce of approx. 250 motivated and competent staff based in Geesthacht near Hamburg and the many LIGHTHOUSE customers in Germany and from around the world, who have remained loyal to us and our products.

The history of the Lighthouse Album Publishers dates back to 1917 when Paul Koch, a lithographer, founded a company in Aschersleben, a town which is located nowadays in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It was called Koch & Bein and produced KABE stamp albums that are still published today. Koch was forced to sell the KABE company in the thirties, but he set up a new company called LIGHTHOUSE ALBUM PUBLISHERS in Hamburg in 1948.

More informations to the historie of LIGHTHOUSE.