Non exclusive
The literary agency Liepman AG was founded in Hamburg in 1949 by Dr. Ruth Liepman-Lilienstein (1909-2001) and her husband, the writer and journalist Heinz Liepman. As German Jews they had been forced into exile during the Nazi period. Ruth Lilienstein went into hiding in Holland, while Heinz Liepman emigrated to the United States. He brought the first authors into the agency: Norman Mailer with The Naked and the Dead, James Jones with From Here to Eternity, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Richard Wright.
Heinz Liepman remained committed to his own writing. Ruth Liepman, a lawyer by profession, became an enthusiastic and energetic agent. She soon added a number of important writers to her list: Arthur Miller, J.D. Salinger, Vladimir Nabokov, James Baldwin, Arthur Hailey – to name but a few.
In 1961 the agency moved to Zürich and in 1981 it turned into a limited company with Eva Koralnik and Ruth Weibel as partners. Nowadays, the company is run by the third generation with Marc Koralnik directing it.