my father attended Columbia, where he studied German, the language he, my mother, and Leo spoke much of the time. After university, he started his career as a press secretary for the successful actor, director, and producer Leslie Howard. He then worked as a story editor in New York for Warner Brothers during the late twenties, until he hung out his own shingle in the form of Sanford J. Greenburger, Literary Agent.
My father, Sanford Greenburger
Sitting across from me at his desk, my father put his hands up in defeat. The contemplative nature that kept my father meandering through the vagaries of life and in good company with his writers invariably bowed to my bolder American directness.
“Okay, fine. You’re in charge of the numbers,” he said. “I’ll call Ledig and ask for an increase to $350.”
“Let me call.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m going to ask for $1,500 a month,” I said. “And bonuses if the books we recommend are successful in Germany.”
A look of amusement sparked in my father’s eyes and just as quickly went out. He knew I was serious and that I understood things he didn’t. So we agreed I would talk to Heinrich Maria Ledig-Rowohlt.
Although the head of Germany’s most prestigious publishing house was regarded as one of the great publishers of the twentieth century, having published everybody from Ernest Hemingway to Marilyn French (and he was friends with all of them: Baldwin, Nabokov, Havel), I was undaunted. Out of all the big names and personalities that came through my father’s door, he was the one who became a mentor and more. There was something in the fantastic story of how he came to his position that I related to.
Ledig, whose name means “unmarried” in German, was the illegitimate son of Ernst Rowohlt, the founder of the Rowohlt Verlag publishing house—a fact that he was unaware of until he turned nineteen. A year or two before that, he had approached his mother, a well-known German actress, Maria Ledig, about his dream career.
“I don’t know why, but I want to go into the book business.”
“Well, let me see whether I can help,” his mother replied.
She called the old man and said, “Look. Your son wants to work in publishing.”
“Send him over,” Rowohlt said. “But don’t tell him who I am.”
So off Ledig went to work at Rowohlt’s publishing house, thinking a friend of his mother’s got him the position. After a year or so on the job, he received a call that he was wanted at the big boss’s office. Right away. He was scared out of his wits; this was autocratic Germany, where lower-level employees weren’t summoned by the head of the company.
Once Ledig was inside the dark, imposing office, Rowohlt did not exchange pleasantries but barked out an order: “Sit in my chair.”
“What?” asked Ledig, wondering what kind of torture he had in store for him.
“Sit in that chair!”
Germans do not disobey. Ledig walked around the other side of the desk and sat down.
“How does it feel?” Rowohlt asked.
That was how Ledig found out he had unwittingly entered into the family business. He worked side by side with his father, tacking his last name on after a hyphen, until the war, when the company ceased operations after the Nazis blacklisted it for its books by communists, Jews, pacifists, and other types of untermenschen whose works were un-German. Ledig, drafted into the army with which he served on the Russian front, was the first publisher to get permission after the war from American occupation officials to resume publishing books. Although printed on low-grade paper, they were wildly popular with Germans desperate for new novels. Rowohlt the father, meanwhile, set up his own operation in Germany’s British zone, creating something of a literary father-son conflict. Eventually, though, they merged their operations into one, which Ledig took over after his father’s death in 1960.
Even among his peers of top international publishers, Ledig cut an extremely elegant figure with his tailored suit and custom-made shirt that always remained crisp no matter how long his day. Ledig brought a sense of occasion to everything. He and his second wife, Jane, were the king and queen of European publishing. Jane, who came from an extremely wealthy family (her father, a British banker, put up the collateral for a fledgling company that became England’s third largest British electronics firm), possessed a level of glamour and luxury that I thought only existed in the movies. She was always about the best of the best, buying couture dresses until they couldn’t fit into her closet and wearing a different piece of jewelry every time I saw her. She also made sure every aspect of Ledig’s existence was in high style. Later in life, when I visited them at their stunning eighteenth-century Swiss villa, Château de Lavigny, which I did often, I discovered the pleasures of the elegance with which Jane ran her household. Every morning, delicious hot coffee or tea, freshly squeezed orange juice, homemade pastries, and fine Swiss chocolate, all served on delicate china, were delivered to me while I still lay in my Porthault bedsheets. Jane gave the staff the guests’ breakfast choice the night before because she didn’t get up until noon, at best. (Jane tried her best to refine me as well; in the eighties I traveled to the château so she could introduce me to her Swiss bankers. But when I came downstairs for the lunch meeting she had planned, wearing khaki pants, a blue blazer, and no necktie, Jane took one look at me and said, “We aren’t gardening. Hurry up and change.” I ran upstairs and put on a dark blue suit and tie for the Swiss bankers, who, as it turned out, were extremely formally dressed.)
H. M. Ledig-Rowohlt launching a book in 1968
Courtesy of Foundation H. M. & J. Ledig-Rowohlt
Whenever Ledig came to New York, I would act as his aide-de-camp: ordering flowers for whomever he had dined with the night before, picking up his shirts from the laundry, or procuring tickets to the best show on Broadway. I learned firsthand the habits of a man with the ultimate style and grace. Much more enriching, however, were the long conversations we used to have. I couldn’t believe a man of such importance was willing to spend so much time talking to me. I discovered that his impeccable manners began with his extraordinary willingness to listen.
(Ultimately, Ledig and Jane became like second parents to me, helping me plan my trips in Europe right down to what were the “best” hotels to stay in in Venice, London, and Paris. The Connaught in London required a “personal” introduction, which Ledig provided me with. I learned many things from Ledig and Jane, including the difference between elegance and affluence. But most of all I learned how they valued people for their intelligence and personality.)
By the time my father and I had agreed to renegotiate our contract with Rowohlt Verlag, my relationship with Ledig had evolved into one with father-son undertones. Because of his generosity and obvious fondness for me, I had full confidence when I sat him down during his visit to New York.
“Ledig,” I said. “Look. We’re in desperate financial trouble here.”
“You are?” he responded with genuine concern.
“We can’t exist with the money that you’re paying us.”
After I showed him the numbers (for here was a man who, unlike my father,
