Interview with Andreas Rötzer (Matthes & Seitz Berlin)
Author: Maria Carolina Foi, University of Trieste
Andreas Rötzer (Munich 1971) studied philosophy in Passau and Paris. After working as an accountant at the Munich publishing house Matthes & Seitz from 1999, he founded the publishing house Matthes & Seitz Berlin in 2004. In 2017, he was named publisher of the year by Buchmarkt magazine.
Matthes & Seitz Berlin’s logo is reminiscent of that of a prestigious Italian publishing house, Adelphi. Does it have any particular significance, or is it simply a coincidence?
I can’t say for sure whether it was a coincidence, but I do know that Roberto Calasso and the founder of Matthes & Seitz, Axel Matthes, knew each other very well. In any case, the story goes that Axel Matthes found our logo, depicting a Kanaga mask, in a French magazine from the 1920s. The magazine featured images of North African rock engravings, which were very varied and all very striking, and Matthes chose one of them as his logo. The logo was intended to suggest that the editorial programme was (and still is) driven by a vibrant diversity, then directed against a rationalism perceived almost as a religion. In the meantime, the Matthes & Seitz logo has also become an emblem of the Global African Community, and it is also widespread in very different contexts: in Berlin, for example, if you look hard enough, you’ll find it in the form of graffiti on many walls and building entrances. Today, we might wonder whether this use of the Kanaga mask as a logo was an appropriation. In a sense, it was, but it’s also true that the sign has gone through two different phases of evolution over the last fifty years.
When was the publishing house founded? With what profile?
Matthes & Seitz was founded in 1977 in opposition to the theoretical mainstream , which at the time was heavily influenced by Marxism. The publishing house wanted to bring metaphysical positions back into the intellectual dialogue, and in this it is very close to Adelphi. Even in the catalogue, authors common to both publishing houses played and still play an important role: Antonin Artaud, of course, Georges Bataille, but also Cristina Campo, Simone Weil, René Girard, Warlam Shalamov and Emmanuel Carrère. Axel Matthes has also published uncomfortable classics such as de Sade. In short, they propose authors who go against a certain rationalist monotony and aim to restore a vertical dimension to thought. In short, the idea was to pit the metaphysical against the physical. This was the core of the project that enabled Matthes & Seitz to become a cult publishing house in the 1980s, and to publish new authors such as Jean Baudrillard, Botho Strauss and Roland Barthes.
When did you first become involved with Matthes & Seitz? How has it changed since you became its director?
I started the second act, so to speak. I joined in 1999 as an accountant and at the same time finished my doctorate. Axel Matthes then sold me the publishing house and since then I’ve been the publisher of Matthes & Seitz Berlin in the German capital. My aim was, and still is, to perpetuate this publishing tradition, to transport it into an ever-new present, to give birth to new voices, but to do so in some way in the original spirit, which has always been wild, dirty, restless, rebellious. It’s not easy to keep this rebellious streak alive and survive as an independent publishing house in a zeitgeist that apparently allows everything, encompasses and incorporates everything, but is also ready to erase it.
What exactly do you mean by ‘dirty’?
By ‘dirty’, I mean the unavoidable excess, the surplus that just makes life come alive and yet is controlled, contained and swept away by morals, conventions and so on. You have to stay agitated.
The reference contexts today are very different from those of the 1980s. How can the publishing house create a contagion effect? What do you think would be counter-current today?
That’s precisely the question, an important and stimulating one that I’m constantly asking myself. It’s precisely because social contexts have changed so much that it’s difficult today to go against the tide by referring to outdated positions that have penetrated deep into society. Matthes & Seitz always aims to break with the mainstream. But to do that, you first have to understand what the mainstream is. This is no easy task. Firstly, because an independent publishing house like ours, which finances itself through the sale of its books, must also aim for economic success. And to achieve economic success, you have to be in tune with thetimes. Otherwise, you have to be either lucky or very careful not to go broke. However, I don’t entirely agree with my predecessor that literary quality and economic success are mutually exclusive. I quote what Axel Matthes said, I think it was in the 1990s: if we end up on the bestseller lists, then we know we’ve done something wrong. There’s some truth in that, but it’s not the whole truth. We can’t do without the bestseller lists. But that’s where the art of the mix comes in, which is always reinvented from top to bottom every six months with the publication calendar. It’s a mix that has worked brilliantly for Adelphi for decades.
But how many Mattes & Seitz are there? The publishing house is characterised by a large number of different series and publishing houses.
Matthes & Seitz Berlin was founded in 2004. The Munich publishing house, founded in 1977, ceased operations and Matthes & Seitz Berlin took over. Since then, we’ve had Frank Witzel and Anne Weber, winners of the Deutscher Buchpreis, as well as many German authors who have won other prizes, such as Joshua Groß and Philipp Schönthaler. As my idea of a publishing house is inspired by French and perhaps Italian publishing houses, I like to conceive the publishing programme in collections. I like collections to guide me and, of course, to guide readers. That’s why, for example, we have a collection called ‘Fröhliche Wissenschaft’ (Joyful Science) with the motto ‘C’est dans toutes les poches mais pas dans toutes les têtes’, which publishes short essays by Agamben, Girard, Byung-Chul, Han Heide Lutosch or Jens Balzer with a very relevant book on the Wokeness phenomenon after 7th October. There’s also the ‘Naturkunden’ collection, which we launched in 2013 and which has become an important part of Nature Writing‘s growth. Over the last five years, we have also acquired three brands. The first is Friedenauer Presse, a wonderful publishing house that has been around for almost sixty years, with authors like Vigevani, Babel or Chekhov, and now also interesting new voices like Millay Hyatt and Anna Katharina Fröhlich. Then we founded a publishing house for young contemporary German literature, Rohstoff. This is a wonderful publishing project that offers a platform for young, experimental and daring contemporary literature. We publish texts that would otherwise have no place in the current German publishing landscape. The title of our in-house project was ‘Die Unverkäuflichen’ (The Unsellables): on the one hand, the unsellables from a moral point of view, but also the unsellables from an economic point of view, or at least the unsellables that are difficult to sell. That’s why the first print runs are limited, as are the prices, from 6 to 12 euros. We want people who can’t afford to buy books costing more than €20 to be able to read them. One of these titles is well on the way to becoming a bestseller, or at least very popular: Hermelin auf Bänken by Patrick Holzapfel. The third brand is August Verlag, acquired a few years ago to strengthen our non-fiction catalogue.
Which Italian writers does the publishing house offer to German readers?
There are two great Italians from the former Axel Matthes catalogue. Cristina Campo and d’Annunzio, who Axel loved very much. The next thing I’d like to do is publish Italo Svevo, although he’s been available in German for a long time. We’ve always been rather cautious with Italy; there are other specialist publishers. But there’s so much to discover in Italian literature, and if you love literature, you can’t not publish writers like Maria Messina or Anna Maria Ortese. They are published by Friedenauer Presse, which plans to concentrate on Italy in future. Matthes & Seitz Berlin is preparing a small edition of the works of Furio Jesi. Giorgio Agamben, Donatella Di Cesare and Remo Bodei are also well represented. The complete four-volume edition of Leopardi’ s Zibaldone is a particularly precious jewel of which we are very proud. This is probably the most important Italian poetic and intellectual voice of the 19th century, and one that is virtually unknown in Germany. Ideally, we place him alongside Nietzsche, who is the publishing house’s spiritual godfather. And I’m looking forward to reading Carlo Emilio Gadda‘s Giornale di guerra e di prigionia in German, translated from the new Adelphi edition.
So you prefer the classics, and why the Italian classics?
First of all, I’m a reader who likes to read ‘seasoned’ books. I like to read the classics or be nourished by the classics. I think it’s important to read them in order to be exposed to other forms of knowledge, world views and philosophies. It’s a personal preference. Contemporary Italian literature is difficult territory for me, because I don’t read Italian fluently, so we tend to concentrate on the classics, if only for reasons of competence.
Judith Schalansky is a best-selling author who has also made a name for herself as the editor of the beautifully designed ‘Naturkunden’ series. In 2020, she was also awarded the Premio Strega Europa.
Since the 1980s, book design has been extremely important to the publishing house. In other words, it’s a publishing tradition. I’ve always wanted to make books that had a kind of antiquarian value, because I was, so to speak, socialised in an antiquarian bookshop where I worked for a long time. In other words, books that, in fifty years’ time, will still be selling at high prices in second-hand bookshops. That’s my ideal for books, those are the books I want to make.
Is your aim to make Rohstoff, in which artificial intelligence also plays a role, coexist with a refined publishing tradition?
Yes, establishing a productive link between the future and the present is the aim of my work as a publisher. As a motto, I could use a quote from Donna Haraway: ‘Staying with the Trouble’.