Suhrkamp Verlag is a German publishing house, established in 1950 and generally acknowledged as one of the leading European publishers of fine literature. Its roots go back to the "arianized" part of the

S. Fischer Verlag S. Fischer Verlag is a major German publishing house, which has operated as a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group since 1962. The publishing house was founded in 1881 by Samuel Fischer in Berlin, but is currently based in Frankfurt am Mai ...

. In January 2010 the headquarters of the company moved from Frankfurt to Berlin. Suhrkamp declared bankruptcy in 2013, following a longstanding legal conflict between its owners. In 2015, economist Jonathan Landgrebe was announced as director.Neuer Suhrkamp-Verleger„Wir haben keine Angst vor Misserfolgen“, FAZ Dec 11 2015, by Sandra Kegel
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Early history

The firm was established by Peter Suhrkamp, who had led the equally renowned

since 1936. As the censorship of the Nazi Regime endangered the existence of the S. Fischer Verlag with its many dissident authors, Gottfried Bermann Fischer in 1935 reached an agreement with the Propaganda Ministry under which the publication of the not accepted authors would leave Germany while others, the "aryanized" part, would be published under Peter Suhrkamp as managing director and, inter alia, the name "Suhrkamp" — including Nazi-oriented authors. Nevertheless, Suhrkamp was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, but survived concentration camp imprisonment. Following a suggestion by Hermann Hesse, he left the Fischer publishing house, establishing his own in 1950. A majority of the writers associated with Fischer followed him. Among the first authors he published were Hesse, Rudolf Alexander Schröder, Hermann Kasack,

T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biogr ...

, George Bernard Shaw and

Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a pl ...

.Ingo Langer:
Wie Peter Suhrkamp sich seinen Verlag ergaunerte.
' In: '' Cicero'', 29. Mai 2013.

The Unseld period

Siegfried Unseld joined the firm in 1952, became part owner in 1957, and publisher on Suhrkamp's death in 1959. He led Suhrkamp Verlag until his own death in 2002. Under Unseld's leadership, the publisher established itself within three major fields: 20th century German literature, foreign language literature and humanities. Suhrkamp books also gained acclaim for their innovative design and typography, mainly due to the work of Willy Fleckhaus. During Unseld's reign, Suhrkamp published some of the leading modern German language authors in addition to those already mentioned.

The post-Unseld period

After Unseld's death, the firm was shaken by inner strife. Today, it is led by Jonathan Landgrebe. However, some of its leading authors, such as Martin Walser, have left the publishing house. Suhrkamp Verlag has 140 employees and an annual turnover of approximately 30 million €. Until January 2010, the company headquarters were situated in Frankfurt, Germany; after that, they moved to Berlin.

Authors writing in German

Jurek Becker, Jürgen Becker, Thomas Bernhard, Peter Bichsel,

, Volker Braun,

Paul Celan Paul Celan (; ; 23 November 1920 – c. 20 April 1970) was a Romanian-born German-language poet and translator. He was born as Paul Antschel to a Jewish family in Cernăuți (German: Czernowitz), in the then Kingdom of Romania (now Chernivtsi, U ...

, Tankred Dorst, Günter Eich, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Max Frisch, Durs Grünbein, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Peter Handke, Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Uwe Johnson, Thomas Kling,

Wolfgang Koeppen Wolfgang Arthur Reinhold Koeppen (23 June 1906 – 15 March 1996) was a German novelist and one of the best known German authors of the postwar period. Life Koeppen was born out of wedlock in Greifswald, Pomerania, to Marie Köppen, a seamstress w ...

, Karl Krolow, Andreas Maier, Friederike Mayröcker,

Robert Menasse Robert Menasse (born 21 June 1954) is an Austrian writer. Biography Menasse was born in Vienna. As an undergraduate, he studied German studies, philosophy and political science in Vienna, Salzburg and Messina. In 1980 he completed his PhD thesi ...

, Adolf Muschg, Paul Nizon, Hans Erich Nossack, Ernst Penzoldt, Doron Rabinovici, Nelly Sachs, Arno Schmidt, Robert Walser,

Ernst Weiß Dr Ernst Weiss (German: Weiß, August 28, 1882 – June 15, 1940) was a German-speaking Austrian physician and author of Jewish descent. He is the author of '' Ich'' , d''er Augenzeuge'' (The Eyewitness), a novel dealing with the Hitler pe ...

and Peter Weiss.

Foreign authors

Amongst non-German writing authors are

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic expe ...

, Octavio Paz, James Joyce,

Marcel Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous Eng ...

José Maria de Eça de Queiroz José is a predominantly Spanish and Portuguese form of the given name Joseph. While spelled alike, this name is pronounced differently in each language: Spanish ; Portuguese (or ). In French, the name ''José'', pronounced , is an old vernacul ...

, Clarín,

Mercè Rodoreda Mercè Rodoreda i Gurguí (; 10 October 1908 – 13 April 1983) was a Catalan novelist. She is considered the most influential contemporary Catalan language writer, as evidenced by the references of other authors in her work and the internation ...

, Jorge Semprún, Lídia Jorge,

Agustina Bessa-Luís Agustina Bessa-Luís, GOSE (; 15 October 1922 – 3 June 2019) was a Portuguese writer. From 1986 and 1987, she was director of the daily '' O Primeiro de Janeiro'' (Porto). From 1990 to 1993, she was director of the D. Maria II National Theatre ( ...

, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Amos Oz,

Julia Kissina Julia Kissina (born 1966 in Kyiv), is a German and Russian artist and writer. Biography Julia Kissina was born in 1966 in Kyiv, Ukraine, to a Jewish family, and studied dramatic writing at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow, ...

, Sylvia Plath, Eduardo Mendoza, and Clarice Lispector. Latin American literature has become a special focus point for Suhrkamp Verlag, its catalogue includes names such as

Pablo Neruda Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda (; ), was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Nerud ...

, Isabel Allende, Mario Vargas Llosa, Manuel Puig, João Ubaldo Ribeiro, Adolfo Bioy Casares,

Guillermo Cabrera Infante Guillermo Cabrera Infante (; Gibara, 22 April 1929 – 21 February 2005) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, translator, screenwriter, and critic; in the 1950s he used the pseudonym G. Caín, and used Guillermo Cain for the screenplay of th ...

, Alejo Carpentier,

Julio Cortázar Julio Florencio Cortázar (26 August 1914 – 12 February 1984; ) was an Argentine, nationalized French novelist, short story writer, essayist, and translator. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar influenced an ent ...

Osman Lins Osman Lins (July 5, 1924 – July 8, 1978) was a Brazilian novelist and short story writer. He is considered to be one of the leading innovators of Brazilian literature in the mid 20th century. Lins was born in Vitória de Santo Antão, Perna ...

, José Lezama Lima, Juan Carlos Onetti and Octavio Paz, and Tuvia Tenenbom.

''Bibliothek Suhrkamp''

The book series ''Bibliothek Suhrkamp'' encompasses leading modern authors, including Ingeborg Bachmann,

, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Federico García Lorca, André Gide, Ernest Hemingway, Yasushi Inoue, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Thomas Mann, Yukio Mishima,

Cesare Pavese Cesare Pavese ( , ; 9 September 1908 – 27 August 1950) was an Italian novelist, poet, short story writer, translator, literary critic, and essayist. He is often referred to as one of the most influential Italian writers of his time. Early li ...

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...

Rainer Maria Rilke René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), shortened to Rainer Maria Rilke (), was an Austrian poet and novelist. He has been acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, and is widely recogni ...

, Jean-Paul Sartre, Georg Trakl, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Paul Valéry and Marina Tsvetaeva.

Other book series

Other book series published by Suhrkamp Verlag have included: * ''edition suhrkamp'' (1963– ) * ''suhrkamp taschenbuch'' (1971– ) * ''suhrkamp taschenbuch wissenschaft'' (1973– ) * ''edition unseld'' (2008– ) * ''filmedition suhrkamp'' (2009– ).

Academic authors

Social sciences and Humanities are represented by writers such as Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Hans Blumenberg, Norbert Elias, Paul Feyerabend,

Jürgen Habermas Jürgen Habermas (, ; ; born 18 June 1929) is a German social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere. Associated with the Frankfurt School, Habermas's wor ...

Hans Jonas Hans Jonas (; ; 10 May 1903 – 5 February 1993) was a German-born American Jewish philosopher, from 1955 to 1976 the Alvin Johnson Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York City. Biography Jonas was born ...

, Niklas Luhmann, Tilmann Moser, Gershom Scholem, Siegfried Kracauer, Helmuth Plessner,

Burghart Schmidt Burghart Schmidt (30 November 1942 – 13 February 2022) was a German Philosophy, philosopher. He was professor at Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Education He was born in Wildeshausen, Free State o ...

Georg Simmel Georg Simmel (; ; 1 March 1858 – 26 September 1918) was a German sociologist, philosopher, and critic. Simmel was influential in the field of sociology. Simmel was one of the first generation of German sociologists: his neo-Kantian approach l ...

Viktor von Weizsäcker Viktor Freiherr von Weizsäcker (21 April 1886, in Stuttgart – 9 January 1957, in Heidelberg) was a German physician and physiologist. He was the brother of Ernst von Weizsäcker, and uncle to Richard von Weizsäcker and Carl Friedrich von Weizs� ...

, Joseph Weizenbaum and Ludwig Wittgenstein. A number of Suhrkamp's publications in this field are considered standard academic reading.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Publishing companies established in 1950 Book publishing companies of Germany Companies based in Berlin Mass media in Berlin Mass media in Frankfurt