German Insolvency Check — Screen Names Against the Official Register

Give this Actor a list of names. It queries Germany's official insolvency register (insolvenzbekanntmachungen.de, run by the Bundesamt für Justiz) and returns one row per name checked — including the names with no entry.

That shape is the point. A screening run over a customer list is mostly "nothing found", and that answer is what you need on file.

What you get per name

Field	Example
abfrage, suchbegriff	Musterbau GmbH, *Musterbau GmbH*
gefunden	true / false
anzahlVerfahren, anzahlBekanntmachungen	1, 3
mehrdeutig	true when the name matched more than one debtor
status, laeuft	eroeffnet, true — only when exactly one proceeding matched
letzteBekanntmachung	2026-07-10
verfahren[]	one entry per matched proceeding, see below
zuVieleTreffer, unvollstaendig	the portal's 1,000-hit cap, made visible
geprueftAm	ISO timestamp of the check

Each entry in verfahren[]:

Field	Example
aktenzeichen, gericht	258 IN 49/25, Dortmund
schuldner, sitz	Pflegedienst HAVA GmbH, Dortmund
registereintrag	Dortmund, HRB 35222 — the commercial-register entry, when the court states one
status, laeuft, statusQuelle, statusBeleg	masseunzulaenglichkeit, true, 2026-07-10, the sentence it was read from
ersteBekanntmachung, letzteBekanntmachung	2025-09-16, 2026-07-10
bekanntmachungen[]	every announcement of that proceeding, newest first

The state of a proceeding, and how it is derived

The register publishes decisions, not statuses. This Actor reads the official text of the most recent announcement of a proceeding and derives one of:

antrag_gestellt · eroeffnet · masseunzulaenglichkeit · verteilung · schlusstermin · insolvenzplan_bestaetigt · aufgehoben · eingestellt · abgewiesen_mangels_masse · restschuldbefreiung_erteilt · restschuldbefreiung_versagt · verfahren_offen · unklar

laeuft condenses that to true / false / null. Every derived state ships with statusBeleg, the sentence it came from, and statusQuelle, the date of the announcement — so the judgement is checkable rather than asserted.

If the newest announcement is a side note, the Actor reads up to two older ones before giving up. Measured on file number 258 IN 49/25 (Dortmund): the newest publication was a notice of insufficiency of the estate, the opening decision sat one step below it.

Three things that make this work

1. No time limit for company proceedings. The two-week restriction of § 2 InsBekV applies, per the portal's own documentation, to pure consumer insolvencies opened from 26 March 2018 — those need the court in addition to the name. Everything else is searchable by name back to 1999, and this Actor queries with an open date range. Measured 18 August 2026: a name search returned announcements from 2022.
2. One name, several debtors. "Pflegedienst Ha" matched 13 announcements belonging to 5 different proceedings. Announcements are therefore grouped by court plus file number, and a single overall status is only reported when exactly one proceeding matched. Otherwise mehrdeutig says so.
3. The 1,000-hit ceiling is handled, not hidden. The portal silently caps long result lists. A capped query is repeated once per federal state and merged; if a single state still exceeds the cap, the row is flagged unvollstaendig instead of quietly returning less.

Input

{
  "abfragen": [
    "Musterbau GmbH",
    {"name": "Schmidt", "vorname": "Peter", "ort": "München", "bundesland": "BY"}
  ],
  "suchmodus": "enthaelt",
  "statusErmitteln": true,
  "volltext": false
}

Option	Default	Meaning
abfragen	—	Names to check; string or object with vorname, ort, bundesland
suchmodus	enthaelt	enthaelt / beginntMit / exakt
statusErmitteln	true	Derive the state of each proceeding (one extra request each)
maxVerfahrenJeAbfrage	10	How many proceedings per name get a state
volltext	false	Fetch and parse the complete official text of every announcement
maxVolltexteJeAbfrage	20	Ceiling so a common name cannot run up a bill
beiZuVielenTreffern	aufteilen	Split a capped query by federal state, or just flag it
pauseSekunden	0.2	Delay before each portal request

With volltext: true every announcement also carries the parsed fields of the sister Actor: administrator with address, phone and email, deadline for filing claims, distributable amount, registered office, date of birth for consumer cases.

Speed

A name costs two portal requests and about 0.6 seconds (measured 18 August 2026: ten names in 6.4 seconds). Deriving the state adds one request per proceeding found. A list of 5,000 names runs in roughly an hour.

Plain HTTP against the portal — no headless browser.

Limits, honestly

• A name match is not an identity match. Two companies can share a name, and the register writes people as "Breiter Birgitt" as often as "Birgitt Breiter". Use ort and bundesland to narrow, and read mehrdeutig before acting.
• Consumer proceedings from 26 March 2018 drop out of the free search two weeks after publication. To find those later the portal requires the insolvency court on top of the name — pass bundesland and expect gaps.
• The derived state is a reading of free text, not a field the courts publish. That is why statusBeleg is included. For anything with consequences, read bekanntmachungen[], or switch on volltext.
• This is not a credit report. It reports what the official register says on the day you ask, nothing more.

Personal data

Consumer insolvency announcements contain names, dates of birth and full home addresses. This Actor queries the register for a name you supply and keeps no index of its own — every run goes to the source. Processing the results is subject to the GDPR and to the deletion periods of § 3 InsBekV.

Related Actors

• German Insolvency Announcements — the other direction: read the whole stream as it is published, all 16 states and 193 courts, with the full text and parsed fields. Use it to monitor, use this one to check a list you already have.
• German Foreclosure Auctions — court-ordered property auctions with dates, addresses and appraised values. Some are filed by the insolvency administrator of a case you will find here.
• German Government Auctions — what public authorities sell off on zoll-auktion.de and justiz-auktion.de: bids, closing times, pickup addresses and named contacts at 611 authorities.

Pricing

Pay per event:

Event	What it covers
actor-start	once per run
abfrage	one name checked — charged whether or not it was found
treffer-volltext	one announcement fetched in full, only with volltext: true

You pay per name on your list, not per hit. A screening run costs the same whether the register comes back empty or not, which is what makes it usable for bulk checks.

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Keywords: Insolvenz, Insolvenzcheck, Insolvenzabfrage, Insolvenzbekanntmachungen, insolvency check Germany, German insolvency register, debtor screening, credit risk Germany, KYC Germany, company verification, Bonitätsprüfung, Handelsregister insolvency status, Insolvenzverfahren prüfen.