Overview

• On July 15 the court confirmed an earlier Amtsgericht Kleve ruling that prohibited replacing “Geschäftsführer” with “Geschäftsführung” in the company’s articles
• Paragraph 6 of the GmbH-Gesetz requires a GmbH to appoint one or more individuals as “Geschäftsführer” to be validly registered
• The judges held that “Geschäftsführung” describes a management function without specifying who holds it, while “Geschäftsführer” names a concrete person
• The decision clarified that constitutional equality safeguards prevent the masculine form from being read as gender-specific, so adding “und Geschäftsführerin” is unnecessary
• The municipal company must restore the statutory wording or face refusal of registration after arguing its proposal was merely a modern linguistic update