Dirk Möhrle to become sole owner of Germany's Suhrkamp

One of Germany’s best-known literary publishers, Suhrkamp, has announced a change in ownership, just days before the start of Frankfurt Book Fair. On 1st November, Dirk Möhrle will become the sole owner of Suhrkamp Verlag AG, having held a minority share of 39% since 2015.

He is buying the 71% share held by the widow of Suhrkamp’s larger-than-life publisher and owner Siegfried Unseld, who died in 2002, and close family friends. Ulla Unseld-Berkéwicz will also relinquish her seat on Suhrkamp’s supervisory board by end-October.

The news comes less than a two weeks after Unseld-Berkéwicz invited the grandees of publishing and feuilletons to celebrate what would have been Siegfried Unseld’s 100th birthday on 28th September.

The rumour mill had already gone into overdrive after the 75-year-old sold the famous Unseld villa in prime location in Frankfurt for €4.1m in August. Apart from the fact that the book fair would lose what many consider its most prestigious event location, leading newspapers began looking into Suhrkamp’s business affairs. An article in Süddeutsche Zeitung claiming that the company was in financial trouble, led to a rebuke by publisher Jonathan Landgrebe.

Apart from Möhrle’s minority share in Suhrkamp, the businessman from Berlin is—for now—an unknown entity in the German book industry. The 60-year-old founded and still owns Möhrle Group in Berlin, a private company specialising among others in real estate and aviation.

But Möhrle seems to have made the right noises so far concerning Suhrkamp, as his decision to keep Landgrebe and his managing team in place, was greeted with relief. "I have total confidence in Jonathan Landgrebe," he said in a statement. “And I promise to bring in my resources for the long term and with full commitment to make sure that this unique publishing house will continue to publish good, beautiful and important books with full editorial control."

Suhrkamp Verlag AG was founded in 1950 by Peter Suhrkamp. After his death in 1959, Siegfried Unseld took over the company which, over the decades, became home to imprints such as Insel Verlag, Elisabeth Sandmann Verlag and Deutscher Klassiker Verlag. The list of authors published by Suhrkamp reads like a "who’s who" of German and international literature, including Hermann Hesse, Max Frisch, Bertolt Brecht, Robert Walser, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Mario Vargas Llosa and Marguerite Duras.