Der und Kurze Stationen eines Lebens

When we began publishing literature from Eastern Europe thirty-six years ago, when we started to give a face to the many literatures of this region, when we began to publish Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovakian, Polish and other literature, the Soviet Union was not yet a thing of the past, Yugoslavia was not yet carved up by war and the European Union was a peace project. When we started publishing literature, the Soviet Union was not yet a thing of the past, Yugoslavia had not yet been torn apart by war and the European Union was a peace project. At that time, we learnt to hope and had the inkling of a polyphonic world in our minds, which the authors told us about in their books, their verses, their stories and their dreams, and which their translators brought to us in German. Times pass and new times come. In my 44th year as a publisher, I am handing over the reins to younger hands. I am vacating the coachman's seat. I will watch the trotting horses. The coachwoman has a firm grip on the reins. She knows how to hold them. The story continues. Time passes and the clock doesn't stop. We have broken new ground, we have missed enough. But without the many silent companions and compañeros who were there - privately and in function - when the storm arose, without the numerous Wordlanders who trusted the remote, the different and the new, who helped and gave and threw the saving rope and pulled the cart out of the ditch again and again, we would often have stumbled. They all, and the readers, shared our imagination and trusted. Yes, we all dared to hope and have kept it to this day!