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Suhrkamp given green light to reform

Ian JohnsonOctober 24, 2014

Suhrkamp, the German publisher known internationally for its intellectual works, has been given the go-ahead by the Berlin Regional Court to proceed with reforms. For eight years it has been riven by legal battles.

https://p.dw.com/p/1DbiP
Ulla Unseld-Berkewicz
Image: picture-alliance/AP

Germany's main news agency DPA reported on Friday that the court in its ruling had also trimmed wide-ranging powers held by Hans Barlach, who has asserted a 39 percent holding in Suhrkamp.

The entry of his Hamburg-based media company, Medienholding, into Suhrkamp in 2006 sparked a bitter row with Suhrkamp's majority shareholder, Ulla Unseld-Berkewicz (pictured above), the widow of the late founder Siegfried Unseld.

She holds a 61 percent share through a family holding and was behind Suhrkamp's controversial decision to relocate from Frankfurt to Berlin in 2010.

The ruling, dated October 20 and made public on Friday, rejected a complaint from Barlach against planned reforms stemming from insolvency proceedings.

The court said further delaying Suhrkamp's intended conversion from a commercial partnership into a limited company comprising shareholders would damage the publisher's business operations and outweighed disadvantages for Barlach.

The publishing house, which specializes in promoting the works of literary and scientific authors and is sometimes described as a "cultural institution," said preparations were under way to implement significant steps of the recovery plan in the first quarter of 2015.

Transformation into company endorsed

The administrator appointed by the publishing house, Frank Kebekus said the transformation of Suhrkamp into a limited company could now be finalized.

Hans Barlach
Berlin's top court says Suhrkamp's reform should proceed, despite BarlachImage: picture-alliance/dpa

Insolvency proceedings lodged by Suhrkamp as a protective step in the Berlin-Charlottenburg administrative court in August last year could be rescinded, he added.

Creditors, at two meetings last year, backed the insolvency proceedings, which under recently amended German law, encourages a company to make reforms to stay afloat.

Resort to appeal exhausted

The news magazine Spiegel reported on Friday that the regional court's ruling also left Barlach's Medienholding unable to lodge further legal appeals.

DPA quoted a spokesman for Medienholding, Carl Ulrich Mayer, as saying it would examine the court's ruling.

"We regard every solution that ensures the advancement of the publishing house as meaningful," Mayer said.

In September last year, some 200 renowned Suhrkamp authors threatened to abandon the publisher if Barlach gained significant control of the firm.

Big names in authors' list

The long list of authors published by Suhrkamp and its subsidiaries - past and present - include the philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermass, the renowned English dramatist T. S. Elliot and Chilean-US novelist Isabel Allende.

Past Suhrkamp publications translated into German include the works of Samuel Beckett, James Joyce und Marcel Proust.

Suhrkamp published the novel "Kruso" by Lutz Seiler, this month's winner of the German Book Prize. It's about the demise of the former German Democratic Republic.