Bernd F. Lunkewitz

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Bernd Fritz Lunkewitz (born October 5, 1947 in Kassel ) is a German real estate investor and former publisher . He has lived in Pacific Palisades , a district of Los Angeles , since 2016 .

Live and act

Lunkewitz studied politics and philosophy and founded the anti-imperialist "Rote Garde Bockenheim" at Frankfurt University in 1968 and is an avowed Marxist . He is sometimes referred to in the press as a former member of the KPD / ML . According to his own statement, he was only a sympathizer, not a member. Lunkewitz's portrayal is supported by Gisela Getty and Jutta Winkelmann in their work The Twins or The Attempt to Kiss Money and Spirit .

On September 16, 1969, as the leader of a demonstration against the NPD party congress taking place in Kassel, he was shot in front of the house of the Kassel NPD member of the state parliament, Fischer, by the leader of the NPD's "security service". In some reports in the tabloid press he was later called "Che von Kassel".

Lunkewitz made his fortune by doing business in commercial real estate, mainly office and bank buildings, with the traditional simple recipe: "You get rich by buying cheap and selling at high prices."

From 1984 to 2004 Lunkewitz was married to the actress Daniela Amavia . He has been married to the children's book author and illustrator Stephanie Lunkewitz since 2005. They have a daughter and two sons.

Lunkewitz as publisher of the Aufbau-Verlag

In 1991 Lunkewitz bought the Aufbau-Verlag ( Berlin ), the most important fiction publisher in the GDR , and the Rütten & Loening publishing house from the Treuhandanstalt . In 1993 he also acquired the Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag in Leipzig . In addition to important contemporary authors such as Christoph Hein , Christa Wolf , Hermann Kant and Robert Merle, the publishing group published important literary representatives of the 20th century such as Heinrich Mann , Bertolt Brecht , Anna Seghers , Arnold Zweig , social reviews by Hans Fallada and numerous classic editions by Andersen Nexö bis Turgenew or on the Schiller year 2004 “ Schiller's works in 10 volumes”.

With the Aufbau-Verlag, Lunkewitz was one of the few successful and economically independent fiction publishers in Germany. In addition to bestsellers such as the diaries of Victor Klemperer or Brigitte Reimann and the novel The Popess by Donna Cross , Lunkewitz has also suffered setbacks in recent years, such as the departure of Christa Wolf and Christoph Hein . In 2003, economic reasons forced Lunkewitz to relocate Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag from Leipzig to Berlin, which was criticized in the region.

In the spring of 1992, Lunkewitz bought the Weltbühne GmbH publishing house, which had continued the critical weekly Die Weltbühne in the GDR, which had been published by Siegfried Jacobsohn and Carl von Ossietzky in the Weimar Republic . After initially passed for the magazine Big Plans, Lunkewitz hired her after he surprisingly with that of the Nazis expelled from Germany family of the magazine's founder Jacob son over the title rights in a dispute before the Higher Regional Court Frankfurt fell. Lunkewitz explained this by stating that, regardless of the legal situation, such a magazine could not be made without the consent or even against the opposition of the original owners and their heirs who had been driven out of the country.

From October 2003 to 2009, Michel Friedman , who had been friends with Lunkewitz for many years, was editor of the »Political Book« section at Aufbau-Verlag.

In spring 2008 Lunkewitz withdrew from the Aufbau Verlag. According to an article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung , which reported extensively on the difficult acquisition and ownership conditions of the Aufbau-Verlag, Lunkewitz bought the publisher from the Treuhand, although the publisher was not owned by them, but by the Kulturbund of the GDR was. Lunkewitz says according to this article: "I consider the trust to be a partially criminal organization."

On May 30, 2008, the management applied for insolvency proceedings to be opened after Lunkewitz surprisingly ended the financial support. On June 2, 2008, the publisher received the notice of termination of the lease for the publishing house. Afterwards, in a highly emotionally charged public debate, the former management of the then Aufbau-Verlagsgruppe GmbH, who feared for the jobs, called him a traitor. This view disregards the fact that Lunkewitz has invested considerable funds from his private assets (according to information from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, DM 17 million by 1995) in the publisher since acquiring the publisher and has managed the publisher for 17 years.

Lunkewitz justifies his actions in an article in Spiegel . The insolvency of the Aufbau Verlagsgruppe GmbH in the summer of 2008 had to take place because the Federal Court of Justice had ruled in the spring of 2008, after 13 years of legal dispute between Lunkewitz and the Treuhandanstalt / BVS, that the Aufbau-Verlagsgruppe GmbH is a "non-assets shell" that is not Legal successor to the structure publishing house of the GDR. At the beginning of the legal dispute, Lunkewitz had the publisher's assets separately from the Kulturbund e. V. effectively acquired. Due to the differences with the management that occurred at the end of May 2008, the publisher decided to send the GmbH into bankruptcy. After the reaction of the workforce, especially the editing department, and attacks on his personal integrity, he no longer considered his further work in the publishing house to be sensible. In October 2008 Lunkewitz, in cooperation with the insolvency administrator of the insolventen GmbH, sold the business operations of the Aufbau Verlag, which he owned privately, with the entire assets and all rights (except for the world rights to Fallada), while retaining all jobs, to the Berlin investor Matthias Koch , who since then has been successfully running the Aufbau-Verlag together with the other publishers. At the request of the publisher, in 2010 Lunkewitz also assigned the worldwide copyrights to the Fallada work, which he had acquired separately in 1994, to Aufbau-Verlag GmbH & Co KG.

Lunkewitz apparently operated the bankruptcy in order to hold the Treuhandanstalt / BVS or the Federal Ministry of Finance liable. Since 2009 he has been conducting civil law proceedings against BVS.

Movie

literature

Biographies

Press

  • “I always wanted to be in the spiritual focus of the nation”. The publisher Bernd Lunkewitz on his relationship to literature and society. Conversation with Klaus Walraff and Christoph Keese. Berliner Zeitung May 2, 1998.
  • Bernd F. Lunkewitz, publisher. When will you sell the Aufbau-Verlag, Mr. Lunkewitz? Conversation with Moritz Müller-Wirth. In: Der Tagesspiegel , July 8, 1998.
  • Uwe Wittstock: The Che Guevara from Kassel. Independent publishers, the last of their kind: Bernd F. Lunkewitz saved the Aufbau-Verlag. In: Die Welt , November 24, 2001.
  • I would rather be a knight than a servant. Bernd F. Lunkwitz, interviewed by Christoph Amend. Der Tagesspiegel May 12, 2002.
  • Uwe Müller: The funeral speaker Bernd Lunkewitz becomes an undertaker. The traditional construction publishing house Gustav Kiepenheuer closes its doors in Leipzig. In: Die Welt , February 27, 2003.
  • Christian Esch: Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag leaves Leipzig. In: Berliner Zeitung , February 28, 2003.
  • "I would like a stable full of Dostoevskies". Interview with Bernd F. Lunkewitz, head of the Berlin publishing house. In: Das Parlament , No. 40–41, September 29, 2003.
  • Cornelia Geissler: The Salon Marxist in the former GDR publishing house. The Aufbau-Verlag celebrates its 60th birthday. In: Berliner Zeitung , September 8, 2005.

Publications

  • Bernd F. Lunkewitz (Ed.): The happy hours . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2005.
  • Moritz Müller-Wirth : The culture makers. An intermediate generation on the advance: Bernd F. Lunkewitz & Peter LH Schwenkow . Fannei and Walz, Berlin 1996
  • Uwe Wittstock : Bernd F. Lunkewitz: The savior of the construction publishing house. In: Uwe Wittstock: The book drunkards. Forays into the literature business. Series: Zu Klampen Essay; Dietrich zu Klampen Verlag, Springe 2007, ISBN 978-3-86674-005-1 ; Pp. 42-47.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Hans Riebsamen: Bernd Lunkewitz in portrait: The adventurer. In: FAZ.net . June 8, 2008, accessed November 28, 2019 .
  2. ^ Uwe Wittstock: Lovers of literature with a bust of Lenin. In: Welt Online . June 3, 2008, accessed August 9, 2016 .
  3. ↑ a b Hans Leyendecker: Anger about the Aufbau-Verlag: "I have won and sleep badly". In: süddeutsche.de . May 10, 2010, accessed November 28, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Klaus Pokatzky: Bernd Lunkewitz - Marxist and entrepreneur - how does that go together? In: Deutschlandradio-Kultur broadcast “In Conversation”. March 23, 2013, accessed November 28, 2019 (program announcement; podcast no longer available).
  5. ↑ Gisela Getty , Jutta Winkelmann : The twins or the attempt to kiss money and mind . weissbooks.w , Frankfurt 2008, ISBN 978-3-940888-01-3 , p. 106 : “I don't tell Klaus anything about my doubts, he's on the Central Committee, and the three of us [meaning Getty, Winkelmann and Klaus] are the only KPD / ML fighters far and wide. Lunke is not as dogmatic as Klaus ... "
  6. ↑ From an interview with 3sat, 2002.
  7. ↑ Volker Hage, Dietmar Pieper: Turned off the light . In: Der Spiegel . No. 25 , 2008, p. 166 f . ( online ).
  8. ↑ What was left? Documentary in 4 episodes , waswarlinks.de , Bernd F. Lunkewitz
personal data
SURNAME Lunkewitz, Bernd F.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lunkewitz, Bernd Fritz (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German real estate investor and publisher
DATE OF BIRTH October 5, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH kassel