Founded in 1959 by the bookseller Helmet Buske in Tübingen, Germany, Helmut Buske Verlag began by publishing material reflecting the interests of its owner: tourism and hiking guides. In 1962, Buske expanded into science-oriented content with an emphasis on linguistics. Buske quickly made its mark with an internationally distributed catalog of linguistic titles from all over the world and an engaging book program.

Today, the publishing house mainly focuses on textbooks, workbooks, and dictionaries in around 60 languages for native German speakers. Buske also publishes texts and periodicals in subjects such as Egyptology, linguistics, Asian studies, German studies, Roman studies, phonetics and Slavic studies.