Transit Publishing House was founded on April 1, 1981 in Kreuzberg (then West Berlin), in an adventurous era, when anything seemed possible as long as one was determined to do it.
Even the first books were out of the ordinary: a book about the then-infamous S-Bahn commuter train, illustrated with beautiful photographs of its decline, and accompanied by a controversial text by Uwe Jonsson; A book about an angry uprising of children against the Prussian occupation forces in Alsace before World War I, with a text by Eric Mohsam; And a book aboutThe imaginary discontent among the unemployed at the end of the nineteenth century, when luxury shops in Berlin were looted, with the surprise police discovery that the poorest of the poor were subtly and peacefully enjoying champagne, truffle foie gras pate, caviar, and Cuban cigars.Then came the era of cultural history: books about howling, hiccups, smoking, jazz, the accordion, the Vespa (a huge best-seller), or the invention of cinema - books that dealt with everyday objects or phenomena from a historical perspective and, with their interesting and strange documents and images, received great media attention (and sometimes a wide audience as well). Then came the era of biographies, particularly biographies of German Jews who, thanks to luck and skill, managed to survive the planned extermination.The year 1989 was, without a doubt, a profound turning point for Germany as a whole, and for Berlin in particular. For the publishing house, it marked the beginning of a more novel-oriented programme, with initial support from authors who lived in East Germany and could not publish there – or could only publish under strict censorship: Heinz Knobloch, Peter Wawrzenk, Thilo Koller, Jutta Voigt, Ines Gaebel, Inka Bach, and Claudio M. Florian, who recounts his childhood in Transylvania. The literature section continued with volumes of Ove's lettersJohnson, texts by Hubert Fichte, Imre Kertesz, Georg Grosz, F. C. Delius, Irina Lippmann, Diet von Arnim, Ruth Berlau, Carsten Dommel, Wolfgang Helbig, and Anila Wilms. Alongside these books were presented political books dealing with the history of East Germany and Eastern Europe, as well as youth violence in Berlin (Roswitha Quadflieg, “The Short Life of Giuseppe M.”) or the situation of African refugees (Abbas Ndioni, “The Boat”).For several years, our program has also included many international authors. These titles are regularly supplemented by excursions into cultural history, satire, and the history of (political) crime.
