Frau Dr.Siv Bublitz. Foto: Kai Bublitz

Again and again on Fridays, speaking to Cindy and Bert, it is not the memory that comes, but some big publisher with an important personality. This time it is S. Fischer Verlag, part of the Holtzbrinck Group, who announces that they and their publishing director Siv Bublitz will go their separate ways in the future.

According to a press release, Bublitz is leaving the company “in the best mutual agreement because of different views on the further development of the publishers”.

One could perhaps also say: things have been going really well at S. Fischer Verlag.

Bublitz’s successor as a publisher The publisher will be Oliver Vogel, who was responsible for the programs in German-language literature at S. Fischer from 1999 to 2021. Vogel was instrumental in making the Frankfurt-based publishing house one of the top addresses for local contemporary literature. From year to year, more and more celebrities from Katharina Hacker to Antje Rávik Strubel to Peter Stamm cavorted. On the one hand, that made a lot, but on the other hand, it meant that the authors sometimes received too little care and attention.

Did Bublitz want to change something about it? Born in Hamburg in 1960, Bublitz came to S. Fischer from Ullstein in 2017 as managing director of all the publisher’s programmes; In 2019 she succeeded Jörg Bong as publisher. She has “successfully led the publishing house through difficult times”, she is now certified as parting.

But Bublitz caused the most stir during her five-year tenure when she arranged for the separation from the writer Monika Maron because of her proximity to right-wing publishing houses.