Stated in advertisements appearing in Evergreen Review, Poetry, City Lights Journal and Big Table magazines, the press's goal was “to re-marry good printing and writing,” and to this end the Auerhahn published 28 letterpress-printed titles between 1958 and 1964.
The press was based in San Francisco and published the first books of many emerging and soon-to-be influential poets, including Wieners and Lew Welch.
Its catalogue, uniformly out of print, included works by Jack Spicer; Diane DiPrima; Philip Lamantia; Michael McClure; Philip Whalen; David Meltzer; William Everson (Brother Antoninus); Charles Olson; and the first edition of Exterminator, an early collaboration using the cut-up technique by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin.
These among others, were the “insurgent American writers” that the press detected in its search for the “bold, free and courageous in modern writing”.
Contrary to what a lot of people including publishers think, publishing is not a gentleman’s profession, it is the profession of a crook or a madman.” As the press grew influential, if not solvent, artistic conflict followed, most notably with DiPrima, Robert Duncan (who canceled his book in mid-production), early collaborator Jonathan Williams, and Spicer, who in an occasional poem dated October 1, 1962, wrote: “This is an ode to John Wieners and the Auerhahn Press / Who have driven me away from poetry like a fast car”.