What did you miss most during the pandemic?
That the newcomers didn't get the opportunity to go the book fair, neither the debut authors nor the new staff in the publishing houses. That they didn't get to experience the magic, that they weren’t ceremoniously accepted into the literary world. The industry thrives on the fact that every year a few people say: I would never want to miss this again. My worry was that the book industry would dry up if all we did for years was write and read and work, but no longer experience the special culmination at the fair.
Can you separate that at the fair, the publisher and the author?
As a publisher, it's all about our authors first, I try to keep an eye on who is currently sitting on the "Blue Sofa", who is on the ARD stage and who is currently receiving an award. With my own book I have to do another balancing act – at some points it becomes a centipede balancing act. That requires chameleon-like behaviour, but that is generally rewarded at the fair, where you are constantly in the most diverse situations.
You mentioned the "German Book Prize". Your publishing house won it once at the premiere in 2005, but not since. What does the publisher say about that?
Unbearable! (laughs). When Arno Geiger won the prize, I wasn't there yet. And since then we've regularly kept our fingers crossed at the award ceremony because someone from our company is almost always nominated; the year before last, three of the six nominees were from Hanser. That we ended up empty-handed is of course a scandal (laughs).
In return, you were allowed to rejoice over the Nobel Prize for Literature. Patrick Modiano in 2014, for example.
There are years when the announcement falls on one of the days of the fair. That was the case with Modiano. It was immediately clear: I could forget about the appointments, which are every 30 minutes, for the rest of the day. Now it's about other things.
Do you prepare for such events?
You can't go ahead and print on the off chance. There are always too many rumours swirling around in the run-up to the Nobel Prize for Literature. In the case of Modiano, we were actually totally blind-sighted because there was no new book published by him that year. And we don't carry any backlist to Frankfurt. We had to work night shifts to get books to the stand.
And Herta Müller 2009?
An absolutely exceptional year. Unlike Modiano, she was not a translated author, but Hanser was her original publisher, after she had moved here shortly before. I only know it from stories, but the whole publishing house was in a state of emergency for weeks, organising book supplies and licensing talks.
If you look at the history of Frankfurter Buchmesse, you see: Frankfurt was often the place where society negotiated its current problems. Is that still true?
Absolutely. You can see that in the way right-wing publishers are dealt with. It's about a contradiction that has to be reconciled again and again: we stand for freedom of opinion and freedom of speech, but we also have things that are non-negotiable: human dignity and equality, to name just one example. Both are high principles that often wrestle with each other. We have to negotiate and justify the contradiction again and again. That is exhausting, but necessary.
Messeroman (fair novel), would that be a genre for you as a writer?
For heaven's sake. It would be out of the question for me, but it might be interesting. The fair as an institution with the enormous pressure that weighs on everyone in a short time, the polyphony, the vanities - that would be perfect material for a novel.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
Most likely everything. I don't just want to chat, not just read, not just manage, not just negotiate; it's the polyphony that excites me.
