Merle Ostendorp, Rights Manager at the Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, speaks to NBG about her varied job, her experiences as a Frankfurt Fellow and what makes the Wagenbach publishing house so special

Anna Compton: What do you like best about your job at the Wagenbach Verlag?

Merle Ostendorp: The books! And I really mean that, because books and their contents are where my work begins. I read a lot of the books before they’re published, but I especially enjoy the reading in the run up to a book fair. Then I’m not just reading, I’m also thinking about which aspects could be interesting for which country and whether the content would be at all compatible with other literary markets.

So the best thing about my work is probably the mixture of silent reading and the chance to talk about what I’ve read with lots of people afterwards. The more international the range of people you speak to, the more you learn about other cultures.

AC: How did you get into publishing?

In a publisher of this size (11 staff members), this means I do everything – author contracts, domestic rights, foreign rights – it’s incredibly varied.

Merle Ostendorp

MO: Like almost everyone who works in literature, probably, I started out with a few internships: in a PR agency focusing on culture (mostly small publishing houses), with the literary agency of Saskia von Hoegen and, finally, on its recommendation, at the Wagenbach Verlag. Once I’d started here it was almost like a natural progression – I was surrounded by people who loved literature and the content was the only focus. During my internship, I was already asked if I’d like to start work as a trainee after my Master’s, and I jumped at the chance. The huge benefit of small publishing houses is that you also get an insight into other departments, and I soon had my eye on the Rights department. So, although I carried on managing the events after my traineeship, I also took over the Rights department. In a publisher of this size (11 staff members), this means I do everything – author contracts, domestic rights, foreign rights – it’s incredibly varied.

AC: You were selected as one of the Frankfurt Book Fair’s Frankfurt Fellows of 2024, giving you the opportunity to network with publishers from all over the world. How did participating in the programme benefit you?

The questions and comments from the other Frankfurt Fellows enabled me to refine my perspective of my own market and see it from a new angle. Although I speak to international colleagues on a daily basis, I had never been able to gain such a nuanced insight into the various book markets before.

Merle Ostendorp

MO: At first, I was a little sceptical about whether I would get as much from the Fellowship as my international colleagues, because I already knew almost all of the publishers, bookshops and agencies that we visited, but the two weeks exceeded all my expectations. The questions and comments from the other Fellows enabled me to refine my perspective of my own market and see it from a new angle. Although I speak to international colleagues on a daily basis, I had never been able to gain such a nuanced insight into the various book markets before. Book fair meetings are really important, but unfortunately you never have enough time to get to know the strengths and weaknesses of the other markets in detail.

AC: That sounds like a fascinating experience! Let’s move back to the Verlag Klaus Wagenbach – how was the publishing house established?

The founder Klaus Wagenbach began his career as an editor at S. Fischer Verlag in Frankfurt am Main. The publishing house was taken over by the Holtzbrinck Group, leading to Wagenbach’s dismissal for political reasons. Together with some of his author friends (including Ingeborg Bachmann and Günter Grass), he decided to start his own publishing house with the aim of publishing authors from both West and East Germany. However, he received a licence and travel ban from the German Democratic Republic in 1965 after publishing Wolf Biermann’s poetry collection The Wire Harp. Nevertheless, the publisher retained its ‘communist’ flavour and soon became the publisher of the student movement, while always remaining a literary publisher. The Wagenbach publishing house also has a deep fondness for Italy, and has been a publisher of Italian literature and art since the 1980s.

Susanne Schüssler took over as director in 2002 and continued the internationalisation process which began in the 1990s with the Romance languages, expanding Wagenbach’s catalogue to include the Americas and Africa.

And that’s just a very brief summary – the complete history of the publishing house could fill several books!

AC: Yes, it certainly has a long history. In fact, the Wagenbach Verlag reached its 60^th anniversary in 2024. How did you celebrate this milestone?

MO: Actually, 2024 was full of reasons to celebrate because, apart from the publisher’s 60^th anniversary, we commemorated the 100^th anniversary of Kafka’s death with a new publication (Kafka’s Family) and numerous events, as well as recognising Italian literature with the country’s appearance as Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

There was also a publisher’s evening almost every week at a whole range of bookshops throughout Germany, Austria and Switzerland. I’d like to say a big thank you to all the booksellers – their work has always been absolutely crucial for our publishing house.

Finally, we treated ourselves to an updated version of our publishing house’s history book, which not only contains a great many stories from our past, but also a large number of excerpts from books we have published over the last 60 years. Unfortunately, it’s not yet available in English.

AC: The Verlag Klaus Wagenbach calls itself ‘the independent publishing house for wild reading’. What does ‘wild reading’ mean and how does this define the selection of books published?

To me, wild reading means being open to the unexpected, to new, sometimes even unusual books. This makes our catalogue so diverse, just like our wild readers! We discover unknown authors, commemorate modern classics and give independent minds a space for new ideas.

Merle Ostendorp

MO: To me, wild reading means being open to the unexpected, to new, sometimes even unusual books. This makes our catalogue so diverse, just like our wild readers! We discover unknown authors, commemorate modern classics and give independent minds a space for new ideas. We publish literature, history, art and art history, and politics from the languages we know: Italian, Spanish, English, French and German.

Our literature catalogue contains novels that stand out due to their style, and often due to their social criticism (without being preachy!). One example is Francesca Melandri’s book Alle, außer mir (‘Everyone but Me’, translated from Italian to German by Esther Hansen), a portrait of Italian colonialism and how its legacy lingers on in the present. There’s also the new book by Spanish author Sara Mesa, Die Familie (‘The Family’, translated into German by Peter Kultzen), which describes how family relationships can shape a whole life in ambiguous scenes and from different perspectives.

But, if you flick forward a few pages in our catalogue, you’ll find a brilliantly researched book about the citrus fruits of Italy in our SALTO series, followed by non-fiction on art, art history and politics.

AC: What else makes the Wagenbach publishing house different from other German publishers?

MO: Unlike many other publishers of the same size, we are still independent. You can see this in both our catalogue and our structure. We do almost everything in-house and place particular emphasis on editing and production. As I said, we only translate and publish books from and in the languages we know. The books are reviewed meticulously by our editors and chosen by consensus. Once a week, the editors get together behind closed doors (we have an open-door policy in our office at other times) to discuss potential new books. They often agree, but sometimes they leave the meeting a little fired up and, when that happens, it always makes me realise how important it is to talk about literature – and sometimes to argue about it!

AC: Which of your authors would you particularly like to recommend?

MO: If you feel like exploring new forms and are open to more experimental literature, you’ve got to try the books by young German-speaking authors Katharina Mevissen and Finn Job. In Mutters Stimmbruch, Mevissen describes the ‘transformation’ of an ageing woman who reinvents herself after her husband and children have left home. I think it’s very important that Mevissen has given ‘Mother’ the leading and only role in her novel and writes about a woman getting older beyond all the usual clichés.

Finn Job has already ‘carved out’ his own unique style and presents an intelligent, contemporary comedy in five acts with a great deal of satire in his second book Damenschach. At a dinner party in a villa at the heart of a forest, five characters discuss all kinds of topical issues, exposing the absurd idleness of public speaking in a lively narrative.

Another author whose books I only discovered through my work is art historian Wolfgang Ullrich, who always takes a highly critical look at current topics from the art world and encourages readers to consider it from a new perspective. For example, in his book Kunst Nach den Ende der Autonomie, he analyses the status and function of art in today’s society and suggests that readers should view changes positively too.

AC: Which of your authors have already been translated into English?

MO: Quite a lot actually, but not nearly enough. To name a few, there’s Hans von Trotha’s book Pollak’s Arm (published in Elisabeth Lauffer’s translation by New Vessel Press), the life story of Jewish antiquities dealer and art collector Ludwig Pollak in the context of an event in the history of the Holocaust that is relatively unknown even to Italophiles – the deportation of all Jews from Rome on a single day in 1943. There’s also the autobiography of German Gypsy Otto Rosenberg A Gypsy in Auschwitz (translation published by Monoray), which has proved very popular with English-speaking readers. There are also a couple more titles currently being translated into English, including two non-fiction works: Brust by Anja Zimmermann and Revolutionäre im Interview by Anke te Heesen.

AC: Are there any other books published by Wagenbach that you think should be translated into English and why?

MO: Although I could reel off a whole list, I just want to recommend one book, which has only been translated into Italian so far, but deserves a lot more international attention: Gegen Wegwerfarchitektur by architect and urban scholar Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani. In his short essay, he shares a brief history of urban and architectural consumerism to form the basis for his reflections on a culture of substantial sustainability. For him, it’s clear that we shouldn’t demolish and build anew, but refurbish and reuse. The longer the life of a building, the more ecological it is. This issue will affect us all in the future, whether we like it or not!

AC: Are there any new books you’d especially like to highlight?

MO: Definitely! This spring, a book was published that particularly impressed me: Frauen vor Mustern (‘Women in front of Patterns’) by Anke te Heesen. Artists such as Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne and Mari Katayama have all produced portraits of women with patterned backgrounds. Te Heesen outlines the way in which this motif recurs throughout (art) history and the link between women’s rooms and their freedom with an incisive look at the patterned worlds of past and present.

I was really surprised by the new book by brilliant author Lothar Müller, who published Die Feuerschrift (‘Writing with Fire’) to commemorate the 300^th birthday of Giacomo Casanova this year. Sprinkled with plenty of anecdotes and captivating language, he tells a completely different story about the (in)famous lover: Casanova as a well-connected European intellectual, who followed and commented on the major upheavals in Europe, from the end of the Ancien Régime and the fall of the Republic of Venice to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the final partition of Poland.

AC: Wildhof by Eva Strasser and Above Earth, Below Heaven by Milena Michiko Flašar have been recommended by New Books in German. Why do you think people should read them? Why should they be translated into English?

Both books are absolutely worth a read, each in their own way. Above Earth, Below Heaven is already Milena’s third book with us and I’m always fascinated by the way she manages to write about such heavy subjects, like death, with such spare and elegant language. This novel is centred around Kodokushi cases – socially isolated people who die alone at home. By chance, protagonist Suzu becomes part of a ‘cleaning crew’ that cleans these homes. Although it’d be nice to only encounter this topic in the realm of fiction, it has become an everyday occurrence in our increasingly distanced society. At least, I noticed that I started seeing and treating other people differently after reading it. And when literature can have that effect, as many people as possible should read it!

Wildhof by Eva Strasser is different, because her book’s plot (a young woman returns to her hometown to come to terms with her traumatic childhood) appears in many literary works. However, with her atmospheric language full of imagery, she manages to immerse her readers in the action. You can feel the protagonist’s rage, smell the mossy forest floor and would give anything to solve all the mysteries of the past with her.

Thanks so much for the interesting conversation, Merle!

Verlag Klaus Wagenbach NBG jury selections with guaranteed translation funding

Learn more about the Frankfurt Fellowship –

The Frankfurter Buchmesse’s Frankfurt Fellowship Programme is an intensive training and networking programme for publishers, editors, rights & licensing managers, and literary agents from all over the world.

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