The firm was established by
Peter Suhrkamp, who had led the equally renowned
S. Fischer Verlag since 1936. As the censorship of the Nazi regime endangered the existence of the S. Fischer Verlag with its many dissident authors, Gottfried Bermann Fischer in 1935 reached an agreement with the Propaganda Ministry under which the publication of the not accepted authors would leave Germany while others, the "aryanized" part, would be published under Peter Suhrkamp as managing director and, inter alia, the name "Suhrkamp" — including Nazi-oriented authors. Nevertheless, Suhrkamp was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, but survived
concentration camp imprisonment. Following a suggestion by
Hermann Hesse, he left the Fischer publishing house, establishing his own in 1950. A majority of the writers associated with Fischer followed him. Among the first authors he published were Hesse,
Rudolf Alexander Schröder,
Hermann Kasack,
T. S. Eliot,
George Bernard Shaw and
Bertolt Brecht.{{Cite web|title=Kriegsgeschichten – Wie Peter Suhrkamp sich seinen Verlag ergaunerte ==The Unseld period==