After the war he was left homeless when most of Pomerania was transferred to Poland and all of its Germans were expelled. Kleist went into the publishing business in West Germany and founded his own publishing house, the Ewald-von-Kleist-Verlag, which became a leading German publishing house. He joined the Protestant Order of Saint John (Bailiwick of Brandenburg) to which his executed father had belonged, and he was admitted as a Knight of Honour in 1957 and promoted to Knight of Justice in 1975.