A "giant flourish" stands at the beginning of this book. A young man in East Berlin marvels at it. The young man's name is Fritz J. Raddatz, who, at the time the story of this book begins, is the deputy chief editor of the East Berlin publishing house Volk und Welt; the flourish is the signature of Heinrich Maria Ledig-Rowohlt, not easily decipherable in its swirls on letters and contracts. In the late 1950s, the two men meet, and the flourish becomes a person, then also a literary companion, a "boss," a friend, a fellow adventurer on the forays into German and foreign literature. This book tells that story: how the German publishing industry began anew after the war and how, at Rowohlt Verlag in Reinbek, two men, united by their enthusiasm for literature, created an international publishing house like no other. This book.