Publisher

Schocken’s publishing activities spanned three continents, and continues to thrive today. Schocken Verlag in Berlin, founded in 1931, was the largest Jewish publishing house in Germany, and the last publisher that operated freely under the Nazi regime. During these years, it was only through Schocken Verlag that German and Jewish readers could find works of Franz Kafka, Heinrich Heine, Martin Buber, and many other writers who were banned by the Nazis. Between 1931 and 1938, when the Nazi regime finally shut down the company, Schocken Verlag published close to 200 titles in fiction, history, philosophy, theology, and politics.

In 1935, Schocken bought a small Hebrew newspaper, named Ha’aretz, and nominated his son Gustav (Gershom) Schocken to be publisher and chief editor. He went on to found the Schocken Publishing House in Tel Aviv (1939), and Schocken Books in New York (1945), whose first chief editor was the acclaimed scholar Hannah Arendt. The first English versions of books by Kafka and Agnon were published by Schocken Books.

Schocken published most of the important European Jewish writers of the 20th century, including Franz Kafka, Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin, and Hannah Arendt. He was a lifelong friend and mentor of S.Y. Agnon, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1966. Schocken met Agnon in Berlin in 1915. Struck by Agnon’s unique talent, Schocken became Agnon’s ardent patron and sole publisher, a relationship that lasted until Schocken’s death in 1959.

Under the leadership of Gustav Schocken, and later of his son Amos Schocken, Haaretz became a full-fledged daily newspaper. Today, Haaretz is considered the Israeli equivalent of the New York Times, and the publishing houses in New York and Tel Aviv are thriving. Schocken Books was acquired by Random House, and continues to operate as an independent division, under the Schocken imprint. The Publishers of Haaretz and the Schocken Publishing House in Tel Aviv are Amos Schocken and Racheli Edelman, respectively, Schocken’s grandchildren.