The entrance of the (now demolished) Suhrkamp-building in FrankfurtThe suhrkamp taschenbuch wissenschaft series was started in 1973 with Habermas's Erkenntnis und Interesse (Knowledge and Human Interests) (1968). The other two books pictured here are by Hegel and Otfried Höffe respectively.
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.[clarification needed]
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.[1] In 2015, economist Jonathan Landgrebe was announced as director.[2]
Early history
The firm was established by Peter Suhrkamp, who had led the equally renowned S. Fischer Verlag 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"[3][4] part, would be published under Peter Suhrkamp as managing director and, inter alia, the name "Suhrkamp" — including Nazi-oriented authors.[5]
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, George Bernard Shaw and Bertolt Brecht.[6]
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.
In 2010 "more than 2,000 boxes" of archives, described as material on the "history of ... Suhrkamp" and "the personal archive of Siegfried Unseld", were lodged with the German Literature Archive (Deutsches Literaturarchiv) in Marbach am Neckar.[7]
^James, Harold; Barkai, Avraham; Siber, Karl Heinz (2001). Die Deutsche Bank und die "Arisierung" (in German). München: C.H. Beck. ISBN3-406-47192-7. OCLC47712303.
^Mattenklott, Gert; Schoeps, Julius H; Grözinger, Karl E. (1996). Menora : Jahrbuch für deutsch-jüdische Geschichte 1996 (in German). München: Philo. ISBN3-8257-0030-5. OCLC932465800.
^Z. B. Felix Lützkendorf, Carl Haensel und Kurt Pritzkoleit
