Saga of German publisher stranger than fiction

For generations of Germans the rainbow of Suhrkamp paperback spines were as evocative as the orange Penguin for English readers. But yesterday the colour drained away when a Berlin court opened insolvency proceedings against the German publisher of Joyce and Beckett.

The court case is the latest twist in a complicated corporate saga that is stranger than most of the fiction Suhrkamp has published in its six-decade history.

Established by Peter Suhrkamp in 1950, the company was soon home for Germany’s literary leading lights: Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht and Hermann Hesse. After Suhrkamp’s death in 1952 co-publisher Siegfried Unseld built up the company’s stable of pedigree German authors and satisfied readers’ appetite for foreign authors in translation from Proust, Pound, Sartre and Lorca.

Choppy waters
Enseld's death a decade ago left the company in choppy waters when control passed to a trust managed by his widow, Ulla Unseld-Berkéwicz, an actor turned author. She moved the company from Frankfurt to Berlin and tried to reform it but found her energies sapped by a battle with Hans Barlach, a minority shareholder from Hamburg and grandson of the artist Ernst Barlach.

He came on the scene in 2006 when, with several partners, he moved to buy a 29 per cent share of the publisher. Since then Barlach and Unseld-Berkéwicz have been locked in a very dirty, very public and very complex feud with more insults, lawsuits and reversals of fortune than Dallas.

Barlach accuses Unseld-Berkéwicz of being an obstinate publisher who cannot turn a profit; she has dubbed him a “blunt automaton” out for unrealistic return on investment. Barlach’s battle to seize control of Suhrkamp took an unexpected turn when one of his partners failed to pay his share of the purchase price and instead took his life.

Barlach moved to buy all shares himself but the Swiss seller, still waiting for his money, has now taken Barlach to court in Zürich. Undeterred, Barlach launched his own legal case against Suhrkamp in Germany, forcing them to pay out his share of one-off profits, a €2 million demand that pushed the company into bankruptcy protection. Now, in a risky move, the Suhrkamp family foundation plans to use bankruptcy proceedings to transform the struggling publisher into a listed company – squeezing out Barlach.

Disillusioned
Many disillusioned Suhrkamp authors have defected to rivals while loyal authors, including Jürgen Habermas, have penned an open letter attacking the "legal proceedings that are threatening the existence of an outstanding institution of intellectual life".

Even if it survives its legal endgame, Suhrkamp faces an uncertain future: a grey shadow of a one-time literary rainbow.