Foundations Board of Trustees

The Board of Trustees consists of three members from the Executive Board of the Börsenverein and six additional members. The Executive Board appoints the President and two other members. The other six members are elected by the Executive Board for three years. They have the possibility to extend for additional three years. These members do not need to be members of the German Publishers & Booksellers Association.

Klaus Brinkbäumer

Born in 1967 in Münster, is an award-winning journalist and author. Since April 2019 he has been working for the weekly magazine "Die Zeit". Prior to this, he was editor-in-chief of the news magazine "Der Spiegel" from 2015 to 2018, for which he has also worked since 2007, first as a foreign correspondent in New York, and from 2011 as deputy editor-in-chief. In 2016, Klaus Brinkbäumer founded the Europe-wide investigative network European Investigative Collaborations. For his journalistic work, Klaus Brinkbäumer received the Egon Erwin Kisch Award, the Henri Nannen Award and the German Reporter Award.Klaus Brinkbäumer has published numerous books including "Obituary on America", "Under the Sand" and "The Last Journey - The Case of Christopher Columbus".

Klaus Brinkbäumer has been a member of the foundation board since 2019.

Peter Frey

Peter Frey (*1957 in Bingen) is a German journalist. After studying political science, education and Spanish in Mainz and Madrid, Frey began his career at ‘heute journal’, reporting as a foreign correspondent from Washington, later taking over as head of the capital city studio in Berlin and serving as editor-in-chief from 2010 to 2022. Frey is Deputy Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Körber Foundation. Since his retirement in 2022, he has continued to focus on socio-political issues, works on various German-Polish projects and is committed to commemorating the Jewish heritage of his home town of Bingen am Rhein.

Peter Frey has been a member of the Foundation Board since 2025.

Raphael Gross

Prof. Dr. Raphael Gross, born 1966 in Zurich, is a historian and has been President of the Stiftung Deutsches Historisches Museum ("German Historical Museum Foundation") in Berlin since 2017. He directed the Leo Baeck Institute in London (2001 - 2015) as well as the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt am Main (2006 - 2015) and the Fritz Bauer Institute (2007 - 2015).Until 2017 he was director of the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture at the University of Leipzig and held the chair of Jewish history.  He was then appointed President of the German Historical Museum in Berlin. The historian, who also studied literature and philosophy, was awarded the Wilhelm Leuschner Medal in 2013 for his work on intellectual history, German-Jewish history and the Holocaust, among other things.

Raphael Gross has been a member of the Foundation Board since 2020.

Moritz Helmstaedter

Professor Dr. Moritz Helmstaedter, born 1978 in Berlin, has been a scientific member of the Max Planck Society since 2014 and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt am Main. His research aims to comprehensively map the neuronal networks in the brain in order to clarify fundamental questions of natural and artificial intelligence as well as possible pathological network changes. After studying medicine and physics and completing his doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Moritz Helmstaedter first joined the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology in Munich as a research group leader before accepting a position at the Max Planck Institute in Frankfurt. Since 2016 he has also been Professor of Neural Networks at Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands. For his work he has received, among others, the Otto Hahn Medal, and in 2013 he was awarded the Bernard Katz Lecture.

Moritz Helmstaedter has been a member of the foundation board since 2020.

Jo Lendle

Jo Lendle (*1968 in Osnabrück) is a writer and publisher at Hanser Verlag. He studied literature, cultural studies and philosophy in Hildesheim, Montréal and Leipzig. He began his professional career at DuMont Buchverlag, initially as an editor, later as programme director and publishing director. He has been publisher of Hanser Verlag since 2014. Lendle has also taught at various universities and is extensively involved in voluntary work, including as chairman of the publishing committee and board member of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association, patron of literary funding programmes and juror for prestigious literary awards. He is also the author of several novels, which are characterised by poetic language and original subject matter.

Since 2025 Jo Lendle has been a member of the Foundation Council.

Jagoda Marinić

Jagoda Marinić (*1977 in Waiblingen) works as a writer, journalist, presenter and podcaster on topics such as freedom, diversity, migration, racism and identity. After studying political science, English and German, she wrote short stories ("Eigentlich ein Heiratsantrag", "Russische Bücher"), novels ("Die Namenlose", "Restaurant Dalmatia") and plays as well as essays and columns for Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Rundschau, taz and New York Times. Most recently, her non-fiction book "Sheroes - Neue Heldinnen braucht das Land." was published.

Since 2021, she has hosted the Hessischer Rundfunk podcast "Freiheit Deluxe" (Freedom Deluxe), which features biweekly guests whose work triggers debates on freedom of art, opinion and thought. In her Arte programme "The Book of My Life", she talks to prominent writers about books that have shaped them. In 2022, Marinić was awarded the Luise Büchner Prize for Journalism. In the same year, she was Cultural Journalist of the Year. She is Artistic Director of feeLit - International Literature Festival Heidelberg.

Jagoda Marinić has been a member of the foundation board since 2024.

Ethel Matala de Mazza

Prof. Dr. Ethel Matala de Mazza, born in Unkel am Rhein in 1968, took over the chair of Modern German Literature at the Humboldt University in Berlin in 2010, after her habilitation and the first professorship for Cultural Theory and Cultural Studies Method in Constance. Her research focuses on cultural theory and the literary history of the political imaginary. Since 2008, she has also been involved in the editorial work of the "Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte" (Journal for the History of Ideas) in order to contribute to its publications (e.g. "Der fiktive Staat. Konstruktionen des politischen Körpers in der Geschichte Europas" (2007, co-author) and "Der populärer Pakt. Verhandlungen der Moderne zwischen Operette und Feuilleton" (2017)), to gain new perspectives on historical facts with an interdisciplinary approach.

Ethel Matala de Mazza has been a member of the foundation board since 2016.

Christiane Schulz-Rother

Christiane Schulz-Rother (*1968 in Berlin), owner of the Tegeler Bücherstube bookshop since 1992, has opened or taken over four other bookstores in Berlin in recent years. She has also been an honorary member of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association since 2004, including as co-chair of the Berlin-Brandenburg regional association (2009-2014) and as a representative of the book trade on the board of the federal association since 2018. The latter appoints Christiane Schulz-Rother as Felicitas von Lovenberg's successor on the Foundation Board.

Christiane Schulz-Rother has been a member of the Board of Trustees since 2023.

Karin Schmidt-Friderichs

Karin Schmidt-Friderichs founded the publishing house Hermann Schmidt together with her husband in 1992. She is responsible for marketing and sales. Together with her husband, she is responsible for program planning. She has been involved in the book industry on a voluntary basis since 2003, initially as chairwoman of the vocational training committee of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association and from 2011 to 2016 as chairman of the board of Stiftung Buchkunst. From 2018 to 2019, she represented the Börsenverein at the German Literature Conference and was delegated from there to the German Cultural Council as deputy spokesperson. At the 2019 Book Days, Karin Schmidt-Friderichs was elected president of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association.

Karin Schmidt-Friderichs has been chairwoman of the foundation board since 2020.