Thalia thalia.de

The first Thalia bookstore was founded on 15 August 1919 in the building of Hamburg's Thalia Theater, from which it took its name. In 1931, during the economic crisis, 27-year-old bookseller Erich Könnecke took over the store, which was then threatened with bankruptcy; his son Jürgen joined as co-owner in 1965. By the mid-1970s Thalia ran eight stores and was the market leader in Hamburg, and in 2001 it merged with the Phönix-Montanus Group. Thalia reached market leadership in Switzerland in 2000 and acquired 23 Austrian store locations in 2002; since 2016 a majority of the company has been held by a consortium built around the Herder publishing family.

The company today runs physical bookstores across Germany, Austria and Switzerland (including a 50% stake in Orell Füssli Thalia AG), alongside e-reader hardware (the tolino platform, launched 2013), the skoobe e-reading subscription, self-publishing services, and academic/professional titles following the 2021 acquisition of Lehmanns Media. The registered entity is Thalia Bücher GmbH, based at Batheyer Str. 115-117 in Hagen (Amtsgericht Hagen, HRB 9698).

Orders containing at least one book or audiobook ship free within Germany; other orders ship free above €30 and otherwise cost €3.95. Returns are accepted within 14 days with a return label, and items can alternatively be brought back to a Thalia store together with the invoice.