Suhrkamp Verlag

Suhrkamp Verlag is a German publishing house, established in 1950 and generally acknowledged as one of the leading European publishers of fine literature.

Early history

The firm was established by Peter Suhrkamp, who had led the equally renowned S. Fischer Verlag since 1936. 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, George Bernard Shaw and Bertolt Brecht.

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 his widow Ulla Berkéwicz. 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 40 million €. Its headquarters are situated in Frankfurt, Germany.

Authors writing in German

Jurek Becker, Jürgen Becker, Thomas Bernhard, Peter Bichsel, Volker Braun, Paul Celan, Tankred Dorst, Günter Eich, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Max Frisch, Durs Grünbein, Norbert Gstrein, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Peter Handke, Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Uwe Johnson, Thomas Kling, Wolfgang Koeppen, Karl Krolow, Andreas Maier, Friederike Mayröcker, Robert Menasse, Adolf Muschg, Paul Nizon, Hans Erich Nossack, Ernst Penzoldt, Doron Rabinovici, Nelly Sachs, Arno Schmidt, Ernst Weiß and Peter Weiss.

Foreign authors

Amongst non-German writing authors are Samuel Beckett, Octavio Paz, James Joyce Marcel Proust, José Maria de Eça de Queiroz, Clarín, Mercè Rodoreda, Jorge Semprún, Lídia Jorge, Agustina Bessa-Luís, Juan Ramón Jiménez, 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, Isabel Allende, Mario Vargas Llosa, Manuel Puig, João Ubaldo Ribeiro, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Alejo Carpentier, Julio Cortázar, Osman Lins, José Lezama Lima, Juan Carlos Onetti and Octavio Paz.

"Bibliothek Suhrkamp"

The book series "Bibliothek Suhrkamp" encompasses leading modern authors, including Ingeborg Bachmann, T. S. Eliot, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Federico García Lorca, André Gide, Ernest Hemingway, Yasushi Inoue, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Thomas Mann, Yukio Mishima, Cesare Pavese, Ezra Pound, Marcel Proust, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jean-Paul Sartre, Georg Trakl, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Paul Valéry and Marina Tsvetaeva.

Academic authors

The humanities are represented by writers such as Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Hans Blumenberg, Norbert Elias, Paul Feyerabend, Jürgen Habermas, Hans Jonas, Niklas Luhmann, Tilmann Moser und Gershom Scholem, Siegfried Kracauer, Helmuth Plessner, Georg Simmel, Victor von Weizsäcker and Ludwig Wittgenstein. A number of Suhrkamp's publications in this field are considered standard academic reading.