Blanche Wolf button

Blanche Wolf Knopf (* as Blanche Wolf on July 30, 1894 in New York ; † June 4, 1966 there ) was an American publisher. She was CEO of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and, since 1916, wife of the publisher Alfred A. Knopf , with whom she founded the company in 1915.

Blanche Knopf was particularly committed to European and Latin American literature to be translated into English and published in America. After the Second World War , she was one of the first among the more important American publishers who stayed mainly in Europe in search of writers. From then on she was also responsible for the publisher's European activities.

Blanche Knopf promoted the careers of many exceptional literary talents and advised them on their way to success. The works of eleven Nobel Prize winners and eighteen Pulitzer Prize winners were published by Alfred A Knopf Verlag . The publisher's authors included B. Sigmund Freud , Albert Camus , André Gide , Jean-Paul Sartre , Simone de Beauvoir , Ilja Ehrenburg or Thomas Mann - but also important American authors, e.g. B. John Updike .

For her successful promotion of French literature, she was appointed Chevalier by the French government in 1949 and Officier de la Légion d'Honneur in 1960 . Brazil honored her with the Order of the Southern Cross .

Quote

There is not a German writer left in Germany who is worth thinking about. - Blanche Wolf Knopf in an interview with the New York Times on July 14, 1936 after her visit to Europe, from which she returned with the autobiography of Egon Erwin Kisch .

literature

• Seymour Brody: Jewish Heroes & Heroines of America: 150 True Stories of American Jewish Heroism . Hollywood FL 1996.

Web links

• Jewish Virtual Library
• Jewish Women's Archive
• Blanche button, editor & publisher . In: Extravagant Crowd - portraits of women by Carl van Vechten