After Rowohlt separation: Barbara Laugwitz starts new job

The dispute over the separation of Rowohlt-Verlag from its former publishing director Barbara Laugwitz, who kept the book industry in suspense for weeks, seems to have been settled. The industry magazine "Buchreport" reported, the Holtzbrinck book publishers, to which Rowohlt belongs, with, both sides had "settled the dispute amicably". Now the Ullstein book publishers announce that Laugwitz will become Publishing Director / Chief Publishing Officer (CPO) there.

At the end of August, Rowohlt had announced that from 2019 on the journalist Florian Illies will take over the publishing management. For the former publisher Barbara Laugwitz, the managing director of Holtzbrinck book publishers, Joerg Pfuhl, had only sparse farewell words left. In addition, there was talk of a contact closure to the public and to the authors of the house.

Some of them responded with open letters, even at the awarding of the German Book Prize to the Rowohlt author Inger-Maria Mahlke was the expulsion of Laugwitz theme: Mahlke thanked the outgoing publisher for her work and her passion.

Conciliatory sounds

In the joint statement Holtzbrinck-Manager Pfuhl regrets now, "that the impression arose that the publishing house had imposed a contact prohibition.This was never intended and completely contradicts our understanding of dealing with authors and coworkers." Even Barbara Laugwitz, who had last carried the dispute before the Berlin district court, is conciliatory: "It was important to me, the long cooperation in the publishing group does not quit in the dispute," she is quoted.

Barbara Laugwitz will take her new position to Berlin from 1 March 2019, where the Ullstein book publishers are based. At Ullstein, she worked for Rowohlt before her time. Ullstein belongs to the Swedish media company Bonnier, which owns other publishing houses in Germany such as Piper or Carlsen. Publisher managing director of the Ullstein book publishing house is since October 1, 2017 Gunnar Cynybulk.

Cynybulk said in a Ullstein press release, "That Barbara Laugwitz returns to Ullstein, I think sensational." He was convinced that "the Ullstein book publishers will accelerate their positive development with Barbara Laugwitz even more".

Barbara Laugwitz herself is quoted as saying "it is her great pleasure to work with Gunnar Cynybulk and all future Ullstein colleagues in this traditional Berlin publishing house and to make my programmatic contribution to his long-lasting successes."