One Hundred Letters

For Siegfried Unseld, letters were not just part of his working life, they were a way of life in and of themselves. He used them to organise his thoughts. They were a constant and integral part of his friendships and of his remarkable professional trajectory. His first contact with some of his most important mentors such as Hermann Hesse and Peter Suhrkamp were through letters. Even later, when it became easier to travel to meet people in person or to give them a call, he continued to place a great emphasis on the role of correspondence.

Over a period of more than half a century, Siegfried Unseld sent numerous letters every day. The full archive of his correspondence now contains over 50,000 letters written or dictated by him. From this wealth of material, the editors have selected 100 particularly fascinating letters and provided insightful commentary on their background and context. Siegfried Unseld’s letters to figures such as Ingeborg Bachmann, Samuel Beckett, Ignatz Bubis, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Max Frisch, Henry Kissinger, fellow publishers, and journalists not only offer a glimpse into Unseld’s thinking, they also document the intellectual history of postwar Germany in a striking way.

»You know me, and you know that there will not be the slightest deviation from the exclusively literary line of the publishing house …« Siegfried Unseld to Hans Magnus Enzensberger, 22 April 1959

»We are not just interested in the individual manuscript but the author himself, his intellectual and political physiognomy.« Siegfried Unseld to Siegfried Kracauer, 3 December 1962

»It would be much nicer to be sitting across from one another, with or without wine, though preferably with.« Siegfried Unseld to Max Frisch, 9 February 1966

»You need a publisher …« Siegfried Unseld to Ingeborg Bachmann, 30 March 1967