It took some time before Diogenes found its way to Dutch literature. Already in the fifties Diogenes published a work by Adriaan Morrien (Ein besonderes schönes Bein und andere Mitteilungen aus der Anatomie des Alltags [An Especially Beautiful Leg and Other Messages From the Anatomy of Everyday Life] (1957) and with that immediately set a special accent in the history of Dutch literature in German translation in Switzerland. But after that Dutch literature disappeared from Diogenes' publications again for many years.

Only in the mid-eighties they revisited the idea, this time publishing a work by one of the three big names in Dutch literature: Willem Frederik Hermans. Hermans' oeuvre found its way into the German language comparatively late. His bestseller, De donkere kamer van Damokles [The Darkroom of Damocles], was translated into Danish as early as 1961, and shortly afterwards translations appeared in Norwegian, French, Swedish, English and Finnish. The first German translation of The Dark Room however was published by Kiepenheuer as recently as 2002.

It is safe to assume that the translator Georg Hermanowski (Link), who determined the perception of Dutch literature in the German-speaking world in the 1960s, played a significant role in this. In any case, it doesn't seem to be a coincidence that the first time an independent translation of a book by Willem Frederik Hermans was published in the German-speaking world it was a translation by Hermanowski's successor Jürgen Hillner (Die Tränen der Akzien [The Tears of the Acacias], Melzer, 1968). In 1986, Diogenes published a paperback edition of Rosemarie Still's translation of Nooit meer slapen [Never sleep again] which had originally been published two years earlier by Rainer Wunderlich in Tübingen. A year later Diogenes published Herman's key novel about the narrow-mindedness of academia under the title Unter professoren [Among Professors].

At the end of the 1980s, Diogenes tried for a while with thrillers by Van Gulik, but then Diogenes made a golden move with Connie Palmen. In one the golden touch. In line with the participation of Flanders an the Niederlands at the Frankfurt Book Fair as Guests of Honour in 1993, Diogenes published the first German translation of a work by Connie Palmen. Her "imaginative" (Fluemann, 1993) debut novel De Wetten was well received. In it a young woman searches for her identity and the laws that determine life. A paperback edition was published by Diogenes in 1995 and later the translation by Barbara Heller was also distributed to the citizens of Vienna in an edition of 100,000 copies as part of the annual "Free Book Capaign" Eine Stadt. Ein Buch [One City. One Book], in which a book by a famous author is given to interested readers for free.

Daniel Keel and Leon de Winter met at the Frankfurter Buchmesse in 1993. At that time there was a lot of interest in Dutch literature. The Netherlands and Flanders were Schwerpunkt in 1993. (Link).

Leon de Winter was also represented at the book fair, with his novel SuperTex, which had just been published by Piper. Leon de Winter, whose first novel Die (Ver)Bildung des jüngeren Dürer was published by Aufbau in Berlin, was not very happy with his new publisher. SuperTex did not get the expected attention. The mood was below zero.

And then Daniel Keel came and asked if he could reissue SuperTex. De Winter seized his chance and Daniel Keel bought the entire print run of Piper (no more than 8 copies were sold). (De Winter, 2011)This was the beginning of Leon de Winter's successful career with Diogenes. In 1994, both the reissue of SuperTex and de Winter's new novel Hoffman's Hunger were published in Zurich. Diogenes is now the house publisher of the De Winter family. The translations of works by the wife of Leon de Winter, Jessica Durlacher and of his daughter Solomomica are also published by Diogenes.

In 1997, a third successful author from the Dutch language area started at the "congenial" (Bartels, 2004) publisher Diogenes. Blauer Montag [Blue Mondays], the translation of Arnon Grunberg's debut novel in the Netherlands, was also very successful in the German language area. Although some critics couldn't understand the "disproportionate enthusiasm" (Bischoff, 1997) with which Grunberg's provocative tragi-comic life story of a 'happy' idler was received in the Netherlands, and were disturbed by "endless repetitions" (Flühmann, 1993) and the "boring verbiage" (Dieckmann, 1997) in the novel by the "wannabe Bukowski" (Dieckmann, 1997), other critics reacted very favourably to Grunberg's debut in the German language area. Grunberg's style is appreciated by many. They praise Grunberg's work as being both "brutally laconic" (Eggebrecht, 1997), "light and flocculent" (Träume, 2007) and distinctly "self-ironic" (Eichmann-Leutenegger, 1997). Ultimately more than 170,000 copies of the book were sold.

Since 2014, Grunberg's books have been published in the German language area by Kiepenheuer & Witch. This publisher's titles by Grunberg include: Der Mann, der nie krank war [The Man Without Illness] (2016), the "touching[], mercilessly funny[] novel about forms of love and the eternal bond between mother and son" (Sojitrawall, 2016), Muttermale [Birthmarks] (2016) and Besetzte Gebiete [Occupied Territories] (2021), Grunberg's "attempt [...] to explore the Middle East conflict from a secular and religious perspective" (Rebhandl, 2021). These books were translated by Rainer Kersten, who apparently followed Grunberg from Zurich to Cologne.