Like other creative industries emerging in mid-1945 from 12 years of Nazi rule, including six years of war, German publishing was ideologically suspect, internationally isolated, and insular. By the 1950s, however, the book trade in the two German successor states was once again varied and vibrant. And it was also tightly integrated into the international publishing business, within which it had become an increasingly active and important presence. This article analyzes the development of the German book publishing industry during the Allied occupation, 1945-1949, through the lens of knowledge transfer. It was a time during which capital-starved German publishers harnessed the political and ideological objectives of the occupiers and their prewar contacts to achieve their own commercial and cultural ambitions, including taking initial steps toward internationalization. The focus is on literary fiction, a genre that constituted a minority of all published output in the postwar period, but which also included all top bestsellers. Literature in translation, moreover, accounted for a substantial proportion of those bestselling books, and at the same time represented a key vehicle for internationalization. Two case studies, one drawn from the Soviet zone of occupation, the later East Germany, and one from the western zones that came to be dominated by the Americans, the later West Germany, illustrate two different, yet remarkably similar paths through which this interplay of ideological alignment and commerce played out among a range of actors and laid the basis for the subsequent development of the industry.

与 1945 年中期在 12 年纳粹统治（包括 6 年战争）中兴起的其他创意产业一样，德国出版业在意识形态上受到怀疑，在国际上孤立且与世隔绝。然而，到了 20 世纪 50 年代，这两个德国继承国的图书贸易再次变得多样化且充满活力。它还紧密地融入了国际出版业，并在其中变得越来越活跃和重要。本文从知识转移的角度分析了 1945 年至 1949 年盟军占领期间德国图书出版业的发展。在此期间，资金匮乏的德国出版商利用占领者的政治和意识形态目标及其战前的联系来实现自己的商业和文化野心，包括迈向国际化的初步步骤。重点是文学小说，这种类型在战后时期所有出版作品中只占少数，但也包括所有畅销书。此外，翻译文学在畅销书中占有相当大的比例，同时也是国际化的重要载体。两个案例研究，一个来自苏联占领区，即后来的东德，另一个来自美国统治的西部地区，即后来的西德，说明了这种相互作用的两种不同但非常相似的路径一系列参与者之间的意识形态联盟和商业合作，为该行业的后续发展奠定了基础。