Peter Suhrkamp

The house where he was born is still standing: in the town hall at Kirchhatten there is a bust of him by Johannes Cernota (2012) as well as a portrait, while a few of his works are exhibited at the local library.

For his contribution as an Assault Troop leader he won the Knight’s Cross of the Royal Order of Hohenzollern, awarded "with swords, for particular bravery”.

Part of the business had to remain in Germany, being purchased by Peter Suhrkamp, who would continue to lead it till he was accused of high treason and arrested by the Gestapo in April 1944.

The legal process continued till early in 1945, when he was placed in “protective custody" (a euphemism then much in vogue in Germany) in the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg.

[2] After the German surrender, on 8 October 1945 Suhrkamp received the first publishing license from the British Military Government in Berlin and began rebuilding the company.

Suhrkamp and Fischer discussed a reintegration of the two businesses that had split when the political situation had obliged Fisher to leave Germany back in 1936.

Suhrkamp was an enthusiastic visitor to the Island of Sylt where his wife had retained a villa following the ending of her marriage to the wealthy (Dutch by origin) musicologist Anthony van Hoboken.

However, in 1953 the holiday villa was sold to the energetic newspaper magnate Axel Springer and his wife for 45,000 Marks: Surhkamp invested his windfall in the German language publishing rights for Marcel Proust’s works.

Authors published by Suhkamp included Theodor W. Adorno, Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht, T. S. Eliot, Max Frisch, Ernst Penzoldt, Rudolf Alexander Schröder, Martin Walser and Carl Zuckmayer.

The marriage had been affected by Annemarie’s alcoholism in its final years and the divorce had been agreed upon between the parties by the time of Peter Suhrkamp’s death.