Kiepenheuer & Witsch is a German publishing house, established in 1948 by Joseph C. Witsch and on behalf of Gustav Kiepenheuer (who was already terminally ill). The partners initially held respectively 30% and 40% of the company's share capital. Kiepenheuer died in 1949, after which Witsch took over control and broke the original link with the existing Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag (publishing house) in

Weimar Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...

(which had ended up in the

Soviet occupation zone The Soviet Occupation Zone ( or german: Ostzone, label=none, "East Zone"; , ''Sovetskaya okkupatsionnaya zona Germanii'', "Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany") was an area of Germany in Central Europe that was occupied by the Soviet Union as a c ...

). For the Kiepenheuer & Witsch publishing business several years of major organisational restructuring followed. The first books to be published under the Kiepenheuer & Witsch imprint was the novel ''Marion'' by

Vicki Baum Hedwig "Vicki" Baum (; he, ויקי באום; January 24, 1888 – August 29, 1960) was an Austrian writer. She is known for the novel ''Menschen im Hotel'' ("People at a Hotel", 1929 — published in English as ''Grand Hotel (novel), Gran ...

, which appeared in 1951. In 1953 the firm acquired a new head office incorporating, for the first time, its own onsite publishing facilities, at Cologne-Marienburg.

Authors

Kiepenheuer & Witsch fiction authors include: *

John Banville William John Banville (born 8 December 1945) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov", Banville himself maintains that W. B. Yeats and Henry J ...

Julian Barnes Julian Patrick Barnes (born 19 January 1946) is an English writer. He won the Man Booker Prize in 2011 with ''The Sense of an Ending'', having been shortlisted three times previously with '' Flaubert's Parrot'', ''England, England'', and '' Art ...

Saul Bellow Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; 10 July 1915 – 5 April 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only wr ...

Heinrich Böll Heinrich Theodor Böll (; 21 December 1917 – 16 July 1985) was a German writer. Considered one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers, Böll is a recipient of the Georg Büchner Prize (1967) and the Nobel Prize for Literature (1972). ...

Breyten Breytenbach Breyten Breytenbach (; born 16 September 1939) is a South African writer, poet and painter known for his opposition to apartheid, and consequent imprisonment by the South African government. He is informally considered as the national poet lau ...

Rolf Dieter Brinkmann Rolf Dieter Brinkmann (16 April 1940 – 23 April 1975) was a German writer of poems, short stories, a novel, essays, letters, and diaries. Life and work Rolf Dieter Brinkmann is considered an important forerunner of the German so-called ''Pop-Li ...

Michael Chabon Michael Chabon ( ; born May 24, 1963) is an American novelist, screenwriter, columnist, and short story writer. Born in Washington, DC, he spent a year studying at Carnegie Mellon University before transferring to the University of Pittsburgh, gr ...

Don DeLillo Donald Richard DeLillo (born November 20, 1936) is an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, screenwriter and essayist. His works have covered subjects as diverse as television, nuclear war, sports, the complexities of language, per ...

Bret Easton Ellis Bret Easton Ellis (born March 7, 1964) is an American author, screenwriter, short-story writer, and director. Ellis was first regarded as one of the so-called literary Brat Pack and is a self-proclaimed satirist whose trademark technique, as a w ...

Dave Eggers Dave Eggers (born March 12, 1970) is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He wrote the 2000 best-selling memoir ''A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius''. Eggers is also the founder of ''Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern'', a lite ...

Dario Fo Dario Luigi Angelo Fo (; 24 March 1926 – 13 October 2016) was an Italian playwright, actor, theatre director, stage designer, songwriter, political campaigner for the Italian left wing and the recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature. I ...

Jean Giono Jean Giono (30 March 1895 – 8 October 1970) was a French writer who wrote works of fiction mostly set in the Provence region of France. First period Jean Giono was born to a family of modest means, his father a cobbler of Piedmontese descent a ...

Marek Hłasko Marek Hłasko (14 January 1934 – 14 June 1969) was a Polish author and screenwriter. Life Hłasko's biography is highly mythologized, and many of the legends about his life he spread himself. Marek was born in Warsaw, as the only son of ...

Nick Hornby Nicholas Peter John Hornby (born 17 April 1957) is an English writer and lyricist. He is best known for his memoir ''Fever Pitch'' and novels '' High Fidelity'' and '' About a Boy'', all of which were adapted into feature films. Hornby's work f ...

Christian Kracht Christian Kracht (; born 29 December 1966) is a Swiss author. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages. Personal life Kracht was born in Saanen in the Canton of Bern, Switzerland. He attended Schule Schloss Salem in Baden-Wür ...

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio Jean-Marie is both a given name and a surname. Notable people with the name include: * Jean-Marie Abgrall (born 1950), a French psychiatrist, criminologist, specialist in forensic medicine, cult expert, and graduate in criminal law * Jean-Marie C ...

Czesław Miłosz Czesław Miłosz (, also , ; 30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. Regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, he won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. In its citation ...

Gabriel García Márquez Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez (; 6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014) was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo () or Gabito () throughout Latin America. Considered one ...

Wilhelm Reich Wilhelm Reich ( , ; 24 March 1897 – 3 November 1957) was an Austrian Doctor of Medicine, doctor of medicine and a psychoanalysis, psychoanalyst, along with being a member of the second generation of analysts after Sigmund Freud. The author ...

Erich Maria Remarque Erich Maria Remarque (, ; born Erich Paul Remark; 22 June 1898 – 25 September 1970) was a German-born novelist. His landmark novel '' All Quiet on the Western Front'' (1928), based on his experience in the Imperial German Army during Worl ...

Joseph Roth Moses Joseph Roth (2 September 1894 – 27 May 1939) was an Austrian journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga ''Radetzky March'' (1932), about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, his novel of Jewish life ''Job'' ( ...

J. D. Salinger Jerome David Salinger (; January 1, 1919 January 27, 2010) was an American author best known for his 1951 novel ''The Catcher in the Rye''. Salinger got his start in 1940, before serving in World War II, by publishing several short stories in '' ...

Ignazio Silone Secondino Tranquilli (1 May 1900 – 22 August 1978), known by the pseudonym Ignazio Silone (, ), was an Italian political leader, novelist, and short-story writer, world-famous during World War II for his powerful anti-fascist novels. He was no ...

David Foster Wallace David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and university professor of English and creative writing. Wallace is widely known for his 1996 novel '' Infinite Jest'', whi ...

Günter Wallraff Günter Wallraff (born 1 October 1942) is a German writer and undercover journalist. Research methods Wallraff came to prominence thanks to his striking journalistic research methods and several major books on lower class working conditions an ...

Feridun Zaimoglu Feridun (from Persian '' Freydun'', Proto-Iranian ''Θraitauna-'') is a masculine given name. People with the name include: * Feridun Ahmed Bey (died 1583), Ottoman official, bureaucrat, author and military officer *Feridun Düzağaç (born 1968), ...

Nonfiction authors include: *

Ralph Giordano Ralph Giordano (23 March 1923 – 10 December 2014) was a German writer and publicist. Life and career Giordano was born to a Sicilian father and a German Jewish mother in Hamburg. He attended the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums from 1933 to 1 ...

Joschka Fischer Joseph Martin "Joschka" Fischer (born 12 April 1948) is a German retired politician of the Alliance 90/The Greens. He served as the foreign minister and as the vice-chancellor of Germany in the cabinet of Gerhard Schröder from 1998 to 2005. Fis ...

Heiner Geißler Heiner Geißler (3 March 1930 – 12 September 2017) was a German politician with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party and a federal minister from 1982 to 1985. Career Born Heinrichjosef Georg Geißler in Gleisweiler, he studied law an ...

Carola Stern Carola Stern ( 14 November 1925 – 19 January 2006) was the name under which Erika Assmus reinvented herself as a serious journalist and (subsequently) author and politically committed television presenter, after she was obliged to relocate at s ...

Alice Schwarzer Alice Sophie Schwarzer (born 3 December 1942) is a German journalist and prominent feminist. She is founder and publisher of the German feminist journal '' EMMA''. Beginning in France, she became a forerunner of feminist positions against anti- ...

Gerd Koenen Gerd Koenen (born 9 December 1944) is a German historian and former communist politician. Life and work Born in Marburg, Koenen grew up in Bochum and Gelsenkirchen and studied Romance languages, history and politics in Tübingen. There, he ...

Necla Kelek Necla Kelek (pronounced ; born December 31, 1957) is a Turkish-born German feminist and social scientist, holding a doctorate in this field, originally from Turkey. She gave lectures on migration sociology at the ''Evangelische Fachhochschule fü ...

Patti Smith Patricia Lee Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American singer, songwriter, poet, painter and author who became an influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album '' Horses''. Called the "punk poe ...

Helmut Schmidt Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt (; 23 December 1918 – 10 November 2015) was a German politician and member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), who served as the chancellor of West Germany from 1974 to 1982. Before becoming Cha ...

Christoph Schlingensief Christoph Maria Schlingensief (24 October 1960 – 21 August 2010) was a German theatre director, performance artist, and filmmaker. Starting as an independent underground filmmaker, Schlingensief later staged productions for theatres and festivals ...

Ranga Yogeshwar Ranganathan Gregoire Yogeshwar (born 18 May 1959) is a Luxembourgish physicist and science journalist based in Germany. He started gaining attention at the end of the 1980s in the German-speaking area for his science documentaries that were ofte ...

References

Book publishing companies of Germany Companies based in Cologne Mass media in Cologne Publishing companies established in 1951 1951 establishments in West Germany Holtzbrinck Publishing Group German companies established in 1951 {{publish-stub