recognition followed the commercial success of Suhrkamp Verlag, and in 1956 Suhrkamp received the Goethe Plaque of the City of Frankfurt. Honorary membership of the German Academy for Language and Literature (itself still less than ten years old) followed in 1957. Island retreat in the north Suhrkamp was an enthusiastic visitor to the Island of Sylt where his wife had retained a villa following the ending of her marriage to the wealthy (Dutch by origin) musicologist Anthony van Hoboken. (Annemairie remained on friendly terms with her first husband.) The villa had been constructed in 1929 directly on the Wadden Sea. In the years immediately following the war the Suhrkamps entertained eminent guests here, such as Max Frisch. However, in 1953 the holiday villa was sold to the energetic newspaper magnate Axel Springer and his wife for 45,000 Marks: Surhkamp invested his windfall in the German language publishing rights for Marcel Proust’s works. Achievements Authors published by Suhkamp included Theodor W. Adorno, Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht, T. S. Eliot, Max Frisch, Ernst Penzoldt, Rudolf Alexander Schröder, Martin Walser and Carl Zuckmayer. A small insight into his personal relationships with "his" authors comes in his volume Briefe an die Autoren ("Letters to the authors") Suhrkamp also tried his hand at authorship and at translation. His Bibliothek Suhrkamp (Suhrkamp Library) series was the first such series to feature works of twentieth century literature that combined literary merit with the new scientific spirit of the age. The “Suhrkamp culture” was vigorously underwritten by Siegfried Unseld who joined as the publisher’s senior editor in 1951 and, after Suhrkamp died in 1959, succeeded him as publisher in chief and sole owner of the business. Death Peter Suhrkamp died in Frankfurt’s University Clinic. He was cremated and his ashes were conserved in a suitable container on the Island of Sylt, at the church of St. Severin in Keitum. Suhrkamp had mandated in his hand-written will that his ashes were to be scattered in the North Sea from the coast of Sylt, but it turned out that this was against the rules. The placing of the urn containing his ashes in an aperture in the wall of the church cemetery was organised by Siegfried Unseld. Peter Suhrkamp died one or two days before his divorce from Annemarie was scheduled to take place. The marriage had been affected by Annemarie’s alcoholism in its final years and the divorce had