The recent Centre for Modern European Literature conference ‘Suhrkamp and European Literature’ has been positively reviewed by the German media.
Peter Suhrkamp (1891-1959) was a German publisher and founder of the publishing company Suhrkamp Verlag. Following his death the company was headed by Siegfried Unseld. Suhrkamp enjoyed unrivalled cultural prestige in postwar Germany, the secret lay not only in its concentration of German-language authors but also in its network of prominent international literary figures. The conference discussed in what specific ways, however, did Suhrkamp’s ‘European’ writers contribute to this resonance?
The conference featured in the print version of the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in the issue dated 19 March 2014. The reviewer describes the delegates’ discussions regarding the publisher Suhrkamp’s attempts to establish something like a ‘European republic of letters’ in the postwar era.
The radio station Südwestrundfunk, which serves the southwest Germany region, also interviewed one of the directors of the Centre, Professor Ben Hutchinson from the Department of German, along with Mark Nixon and Leonard Olschner, about the extent to which the ‘Suhrkamp culture’ was not only a German but also a European culture.
The interview is available online, and can be accessed from the page here:
www.swr.de/swr2/kultur-info/kulturthema/wie-europaeisch-ist