It's a no-win situation: on one side is a woman who takes poetry as seriously as a business plan; on the other, a perma-tanned parvenu in a pinstripe suit who doesn't know his Habermas from his Horkheimer — two characters trapped in the turmoil of bringing down an institution which makes them both look like failures to most observers. 

The Suhrkamp era began with Siegfried Unseld, a now legendary figure who joined the firm in the early 1950s and led it until his death 11 years ago. During Unseld's reign, the company, originally founded in the mid-1930s as a way of evading the censorship of the Nazi regime, became an institution. In every field — contemporary German literature, foreign language literature, the humanities — it flourished. The term "Suhrkamp-Kultur" meant innovative thinking with a stylistic panache to match.  An independent house, Suhrkamp is small — Barlach values Suhrkamp at €75 million, which is tiny compared with big American or English publishers — but revered for its integrity and literary programme.

 It is a home of the enlightened form of critical thinking that emerged after 1945 and which blossomed in the 1960s; theory had the appeal of a dashing art form. The backlist of authors reads like a who's who of intellectuals and writers. And even today, a managing director of the company could say that Suhrkamp wasn't about a quick turnover of bestsellers but "about people who are able to think unique thoughts and have the talent to write those thoughts down". 

Today, with Unseld's widow in charge, the company has lost some of its old-world charm (some leading authors, such as Martin Walser, left when she took over), but maintains a strong foothold both in contemporary culture and how Germany imagines itself to be.