(Corrects story from Oct. 4 to remove Sony reference in fourth paragraph.)

Oct. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Reinhard Mohn, postwar head and patriarch of Bertelsmann AG, Europe’s largest media company, died yesterday at the age of 88, the company said.

“All of us at Bertelsmann, the entire nation, as well as our friends in Europe and the rest of the world, have lost an entrepreneur and benefactor par excellence,” Hartmut Ostrowski, Bertelsmann’s Chief Executive Officer, said in an e-mailed statement.

Mohn served as chief executive officer from 1947 to 1981 and built Bertelsmann into an international enterprise, which now employs more than 100,000 people in more than 50 countries. Until the end, he served as honorary chairman of the Supervisory Board and sat on the Board of Trustees of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, which he founded.

Carl Bertelsmann, Mohn’s great-great-grandfather, founded the company as a publisher of hymn books and religious material in 1835. Today, Bertelsmann’s assets range from broadcaster RTL Group to publishers Random House and Gruner + Jahr.

Mohn was born on June 29, 1921, in Guetersloh, Germany. After returning from a U.S. prisoner of war camp and beginning an apprenticeship in book retailing, Mohn took over the management of his family’s printing and publishing business in 1947. He expanded it beyond publishing and distribution and in the early 1960s he started international expansion with a book club in Spain.

In 1971, he converted the family-owned company into a publicly traded corporation, of which he became the chairman and chief executive officer.

“Mohn not only was a formative figure in German business history, but also embodied the qualities associated with Bertelsmann, a cosmopolitan corporation with a strong sense of responsibility to its employees,” Ostrowski said.

Mohn, a billionaire, received numerous honors and prizes in recognition of his achievements, including the Federal Republic of Germany’s Order of Merit with Star, an honorary membership in the Club of Rome, the Spanish Grand Cross, and the Prince of Asturias Award.

To contact the reporter on this story: Christian Vits in Frankfurt at cvits@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 5, 2009 08:21 EDT