Peter Suhrkamp

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Portrait of Peter Suhrkamp, ​​painted by Frank Grüttner

Peter Suhrkamp (born March 28, 1891 in Kirchhatten ; † March 31, 1959 in Frankfurt am Main ; actually Johann Heinrich Suhrkamp ) was a German publisher and founder of Suhrkamp Verlag .

Life and work

Until the First World War

The House of birth

Suhrkamp was the eldest son of the farmer and carpenter Johann Friedrich Suhrkamp (1855–1932) and his wife Elise Katharina geb. Lange (1868–1959) from the village of Kirchhatten in the municipality of Hatten near Oldenburg . His birthplace is still in Kirchhatten, where his siblings, three brothers and two sisters, were born and raised.

Since he was intended to be a court heir, his father flatly rejected Suhrkamp's interest in the teaching profession, which was already evident during his school days. However, Suhrkamp did not allow himself to be dissuaded from this project and then secretly received violin lessons from one of his teachers, as mastering a musical instrument was a prerequisite for admission to the Evangelical Teachers' Seminar in Oldenburg . To take the entrance exam, he ran away from home for three days.

From 1905, at the age of just fourteen, Suhrkamp was a seminarist at the Oldenburg teachers 'seminar, which marked the beginning of emancipation from his parents' home. Unsupported by his parents, he initially earned his living as a copyist for a notary in Oldenburg . He started his first job as a primary school teacher (auxiliary teacher) in 1911 in Augustfehn (municipality of Apen). Shortly afterwards he was transferred to Idafehn as a punishment for taking in a pregnant woman who had been abandoned by a colleague. In 1913 he switched to the school service of the city of Bremen , presumably to avoid conflicts with the Oldenburg high school supervisor Hermann Goens, who is known to be very morally strict . He had to repay 1200 marks to the Oldenburg state for the seminar training and maintenance allowances. In Bremen he passed his second teacher examination and, almost at the same time, passed his Abitur at the city’s secondary school. The outbreak of the First World War prevented the start of German studies in Berlin . In 1914 he volunteered as a war volunteer and was deployed as an infantryman and battalion patrol leader. For his services as a shock troop leader , he received the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords for "special bravery". Most recently he was deployed as a lieutenant in the Landwehr and received the Iron Cross . After his experiences at the front, he suffered a nervous breakdown and spent the last months of the war in a psychiatric institution.

From 1913 to 1918 he was married to the teacher Ida Plöger. In 1919 he married Irmgard Caroline Lehmann, their son Klaus Peter Suhrkamp was born on June 14, 1920 - they divorced in March 1923.

Studies and various activities

After the war, Suhrkamp studied German in Heidelberg, Frankfurt am Main and Munich. In 1919 he also worked for a few months as a teacher at the Odenwald School with Paul Geheeb and at the Free School Community of Wickersdorf with Martin Luserke and Gustav Wyneken . From 1921 to 1925 he was employed as a dramaturge and director at the Landestheater Darmstadt .

From 1919 to 1923 he was married to Irmgard Caroline Lehmann and in 1923/1924 to the opera singer Fanny Cleve .

From 1925 to 1929 Suhrkamp taught again as a teacher at the Free School Community of Wickersdorf. There he took over from August Halm as its educational director in 1928 . In 1929 he finally gave up the teaching profession and moved to Berlin, where he worked as a freelancer for the Berliner Tageblatt and Ullstein 's monthly magazine Uhu .

Suhrkamp at S. Fischer Verlag

In 1932 Suhrkamp became an employee of S. Fischer Verlag , initially as editor of the magazine Die Neue Rundschau . From 1933 he was a member of the board. In 1935 he married Annemarie Seidel .

In 1936 he bought the part of the S. Fischer publishing house that Gottfried Bermann Fischer was unable to transfer into exile in Vienna and was the sole managing director of this publishing house until April 1944. In 1942, under pressure from the National Socialists , the company was renamed Suhrkamp Verlag. S. Fischer and a little later renamed to Suhrkamp Verlag , with which the name of the Jewish founder S. Fischer disappeared. At the same time there were author bans, which Suhrkamp ignored.

In the spring of 1944, Suhrkamp was arrested by the Gestapo on suspicion of preparation for high treason and treason . A Gestapo spy who had been smuggled into the publishing house in autumn 1943 had collected incriminating material. He reported that Suhrkamp not only continued to publish authors such as Hermann Hesse , Otto Flake and Oskar Loerke , but also undertook suspicious trips abroad and had contact with subversive resistance groups. Suhrkamp was taken to the Gestapo prison on Lehrter Strasse and later to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . From there he was taken to hospital on February 8, 1945 at the height of a serious lung disease. Various personalities had campaigned for his release, including Arno Breker with Albert Speer , as Suhrkamp confirmed in an affidavit dated August 21, 1946 in the denazification proceedings against Breker. Furthermore, sat Gerhart Hauptmann in Baldur von Schirach and Hans Carossa at Ernst Kaltenbrunner one for the publisher. Suhrkamp could never fully recover from the consequences of the illness and the torture.

After the surrender of the German Wehrmacht , on October 8, 1945, he received his first publishing license from the British military government in Berlin and began to rebuild the company. He cooperated with Bermann Fischer , some of whose books he brought out in German licensed editions . Suhrkamp continued the literary tradition of the publishing house by again publishing books by emigrated authors such as Thomas Mann and modern literature from abroad.

Foundation of the Suhrkamp publishing house

The bust of Peter Suhrkamp in the town hall of his hometown Kirchhatten .

In 1950, instead of the initially envisaged merger, Bermann Fischer and Suhrkamp broke up and Suhrkamp Verlag was founded and S. Fischer Verlag was re-established in Frankfurt am Main. The founding of the "new" Suhrkamp publishing house is largely based on the initiative of Hermann Hesse, who gave Suhrkamp moral support and established contact with the publisher's sponsors, the Swiss Reinhart family. The authors of the previous company could choose whether they wanted to continue to be published by Suhrkamp or by Bermann Fischer. The majority of the 48 authors chose Suhrkamp, ​​including Bertolt Brecht, with whom Suhrkamp had been on friendly terms since 1919/20.

His lecturer Siegfried Unseld, who was appointed in 1952, made a significant contribution to the proverbial “Suhrkamp culture” . Suhrkamp's wife Annemarie also worked as an editor and translator at the publishing house.

Suhrkamp liked to stay in Kampen on Sylt , where Annemarie Seidel from her previous marriage to Anthony van Hoboken owned a property built in 1929 directly on the Wadden Sea in Hobokenweg. After the end of the Second World War , Max Frisch was one of the guests in this house . The property was sold to Axel and Rosemarie Springer in 1953 for 45,000 DM . Suhrkamp used the proceeds to finance the acquisition of the German rights to Marcel Proust's work .

Suhrkamp was the publisher of authors such as Theodor W. Adorno , Samuel Beckett , Bertolt Brecht, TS Eliot , Max Frisch, Ernst Penzoldt , Rudolf Alexander Schröder , Martin Walser and Carl Zuckmayer . The volume Letters to the Authors gives a little insight into his personal relationship with “his” authors . Suhrkamp also tried his hand at being an author and translator, for example in numerous essays, the fragment of the novel Munderloh from 1944/45 and his stories set in his Oldenburg homeland. Together with the Suhrkamp Library, he launched a first series of books with literary and (intellectual) scientific texts from the 20th century. Under his leadership, the new publishing house developed into the leading literary publisher in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Gravestone in Keitum

death

Peter Suhrkamp died on March 31, 1959 in the Frankfurt University Hospital, a few days after his 68th birthday and two days before the court hearing for the divorce from his wife Annemarie. After the cremation, the ashes were buried in the cemetery of the island church St. Severin in Keitum on Sylt . According to his handwritten will, the ashes were to be scattered off Sylt in the North Sea, but this type of burial was not legally permitted. The urn burial in Keitum by the cemetery wall was initiated by Siegfried Unseld, who obtained the consent of Suhrkamp's widow.

Suhrkamp's mother, with whom he had an ambivalent “non-relationship”, died 14 days after him at the age of 91.

After Suhrkamp's death, Siegfried Unseld was his successor as publishing director and sole responsible partner.

Honors

A portrait and a bust of the publisher created by the artist Johannes Cernota can be seen in the town hall in Suhrkamp's birthplace Kirchhatten (see pictures above). There are also some exhibits of his work in the library. On April 3, 2016, a touring exhibition was opened in Kirchhatten that pays tribute to Peter Suhrkamp's life and his origins in Kirchhatten.

Works

As an author

  • Letter to a young friend , Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin and Frankfurt am Main 1951 (first published in 1946 as a letter to a returnees ), ISBN 978-3-518-04395-0 .
  • Selected Writings on time and intellectual history by Peter Suhrkamp I . On March 28, 1951. Private print in 350 numbered copies, Frankfurt am Main 1951.
  • Selected writings on the contemporary and intellectual history of Peter Suhrkamp II . On March 28, 1956. Private print in 350 numbered copies, Frankfurt am Main 1956.
  • Munderloh. Five stories , Suhrkamp (BS 37), Berlin and Frankfurt am Main 1957, ISBN 978-3-518-01037-2 . (The title refers to the small town of Munderloh near Suhrkamp's birthplace.)
  • The reader. Speeches and essays (ed. By Hermann Kasack), Suhrkamp (BS 55), Frankfurt am Main 1960, ISBN 978-3-518-01055-6 .
  • Letters to the authors (ed. By Siegfried Unseld), Suhrkamp (BS 100), Frankfurt am Main 1963 (already published in 1961 as a private print), ISBN 978-3-518-01100-3 .
  • “Well goodbye! And habs gut «- letters 1935-1959 , edited by Wolfgang Schopf, Suhrkamp, ​​2016, ISBN 978-3-518-42071-3 .

As editor

  • German spirit. A reader from two centuries . Introduction by Peter Suhrkamp (ed. By Oskar Loerke and Peter Suhrkamp), 2 volumes S. Fischer, Berlin 1940; Revised, expanded edition: Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin and Frankfurt am Main 1953.
  • Bertolt Brecht's poems and songs . Selected by Peter Suhrkamp, ​​Suhrkamp (BS 33), Berlin and Frankfurt am Main 1956, ISBN 978-3-518-01033-4 .

As translator

  • TS Eliot: Old Possum's cat book . Trans. V. Erich Kästner , Carl Zuckmayer u. a., Suhrkamp (BS 10), Berlin and Frankfurt am Main 1952, ISBN 978-3-518-01010-5 .
  • TS Eliot: The private secretary. Comedy . Translated from the English by Nora Wydenbruck and Peter Suhrkamp, ​​Suhrkamp (BS 21), Berlin and Frankfurt am Main 1954.

literature

  • Gottfried Bermann Fischer : Threatened - Preserved. Path of a publisher. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1967, new edition 1994, ISBN 3-596-21169-7 .
  • Hilke Günther-Arndt : Suhrkamp, ​​Johann Heinrich (called Peter). In: Hans Friedl u. a. (Ed.): Biographical manual for the history of the state of Oldenburg . Edited on behalf of the Oldenburg landscape. Isensee, Oldenburg 1992, ISBN 3-89442-135-5 , p. 723 ff. ( Online ).
  • Siegfried Unseld (Ed.): In memoriam Peter Suhrkamp . Private print for the friends of the publishing house, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main undated (1959); contained therein (pp. 157–163: preliminary bibliography by Helene Ritzerfeld).
  • Siegfried Unseld: Peter Suhrkamp. On the biography of a publisher in data, documents and pictures , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-518-45597-4 .
  • Siegfried Unseld (Ed.): Hermann Hesse - Peter Suhrkamp. Correspondence 1945–1959 , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1969.
  • Friedrich Voit: The publisher Peter Suhrkamp and his authors, Scriptor Verlag, Kronberg 1975.
  • Wolfgang Schopf (Ed.): "So I should be an angel and not an author". Adorno and his Frankfurt publishers. The correspondence with Peter Suhrkamp and Siegfried Unseld , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 978-3-518-58375-3 .
  • Etta Bengen (arrangement): Peter Suhrkamp 1891–1959, Paths of Life & Reality , Brochure for the traveling exhibition on the occasion of his 125th birthday. Ed .: Oldenburgische Gesellschaft für Familienkunde eV In: Sources and Research, Volume 6, 2016, Isensee, Oldenburg, 48 pages, ISBN 978-3-7308-1253-2 .

Web links

Commons : Peter Suhrkamp  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Unseld, Siegfried: Peter Suhrkamp. A biography . Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004. p. 65.
  2. ^ How Peter Suhrkamp got his publishing house in: Cicero, May 29, 2013
  3. ↑ Jürgen König: Dispute in the publishing house Suhrkamp , Deutschlandfunk - " Background " , February 12, 2013
  4. ↑ Spruchkammer file copy in the Breker Archive Museum European Art .
  5. ↑ Herbert Heckmann, Bernhard Zeller (ed.): Hermann Kasack in honor , Wallstein Verlag 1996, p. 52 f.
  6. ↑ Hessian biography: Suhrkamp, ​​Peter
  7. ↑ From farmer's son to publisher: Appreciation of Peter Suhrkamp on his 125th birthday nwzonline.de, April 4, 2006
  8. ↑ The years with »Mirl«. The publisher Peter Suhrkamp in the letters to his wife Annemarie Seidel , Review, New Germany , March 26, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Suhrkamp, ​​Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Suhrkamp, ​​Johann Heinrich (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German publisher and founder of Suhrkamp Verlag
DATE OF BIRTH March 28, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Kirchhatten
DATE OF DEATH March 31, 1959
Place of death Frankfurt am Main