Publisher files for bankruptcy

After a massive decline in sales, a church-owned publishing group with 6,800 employees has filed for bankruptcy.

The Weltbild Publishing Group was until recently one of Europe’s major booksellers. In 2011, the German Church was embarrassed by revelations that Weltbild was a publisher of material of a pornographic nature.

Last October, the owners – 12 Catholic dioceses, the Church’s Berlin-based military chaplaincy and the Association of German Dioceses – had to invest €60 million (£50m) in order to close a “liquidity gap” in time for the Christmas season. The major drop in revenues has, however, continued. Christmas sales were disappointing and, according to analysts, the prospects for the future looked bleak due to increasing competition from online retailer Amazon. When it became evident in early January that several hundred million euros would have to be invested in Weltbild by 2017, the bishops of the dioceses concerned decided that investing yet more church tax money in the concern was ­irresponsible and so filed for bankruptcy.

The powerful German trade union ver.di immediately sharply criticised the church owners. “Siphoning off fat profits for years to help finance their pompous buildings but cancelling promised funding when the employees need help – you can’t get more disgusting [behaviour] than that,” said the union’s secretary at Augsburg, where Weltbild has its headquarters. He was referring to Weltbild’s yearly turnovers of around €1.7 billion (£1.42bn) as recently as 2011 when the scandal over pornography broke. Attempts to rein in the offending material seem to be unconnected with the current financial crisis.

The Church has defended its decision to stop supporting the company. “As Weltbild’s owners, we could not take the responsibility of investing further hundreds of millions of euros of church tax money. We were completely taken aback last week when we were told that €160m [£132m] were needed ­immediately as this was twice as high as we had thought,” Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich, whose archdiocese is one of the most influential owners of Weltbild, told the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Added to which the prospects for Weltbild are bleak. We are not unscrupulous entrepreneurs but we are not only responsible for Weltbild’s employees but also for church taxpayers.”

Bishop Konrad Zdarsa of Augsburg, where 2,200 employees are in danger of losing their jobs, said he was bitterly disappointed that efforts to reconstruct Weltbild had failed. “The Augsburg Diocese will share all attempts to help both materially and in showing solidarity. My thoughts are with the employees,” he underlined.