This English translation is provided for convenience only. The German version is the legally binding one.

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Privacy Policy

Information pursuant to Art. 13 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

1. Controller

The controller responsible for the processing of personal data on this website is:

Friesdorf-Verlag, Andreas H. Giersberg
Prinzenstr. 148a, 53175 Bonn
E-mail: info@friesdorf-verlag.de

2. General

The protection of your personal data is important to us. This website is an informational site. It contains no user accounts, no newsletter and no shop; a contact form is available for enquiries (see section 9). Only the data required for technical operation and for answering your enquiries are processed.

3. Accessing the website and server log data

When you access this website, the web host automatically processes information transmitted by your browser. As a rule, this is:

The processing serves to deliver the website, to ensure stability and security and for technical administration. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in a secure and functional website (Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR).

4. Hosting

This website is hosted by an external service provider: GERWAN GmbH (gerwan.de). The provider processes the data listed under section 3 on our behalf. Further details — in particular on how long server log data are stored — can be found in the provider's privacy information. Where required, a data processing agreement pursuant to Art. 28 GDPR is in place with the provider.

5. Cookies and tracking

This website uses no third-party services for analysis or advertising (such as Google Analytics) and creates no personal usage profiles. No persistent cookies are set. Only when the contact form is used is a technically necessary session cookie used temporarily; it serves exclusively for the spam-protection check and expires after the form has been sent or when the browser is closed (legal basis: § 25 (2) no. 2 TDDDG, Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR).

6. Anonymous visitor counting

To measure the reach of this website, the operator carries out its own anonymous count of page views. For each page view, only the following information is stored: the date and time of the view, the page viewed and the type of origin of the view in one of three categories (via a search engine, direct access or a link from another website).

No IP addresses, no cookies and no other identifiers are stored. Identifying individual visitors or creating usage profiles is therefore impossible; only page views are counted, not people. The data are not passed on to third parties, remain on the hosting provider's server in Germany and are automatically deleted after one year at the latest. As there is no personal reference, no consent is required for this count; it is carried out in the operator's legitimate interest in data-minimising reach measurement (Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR).

Technically, the count is triggered by a small script in the browser. If JavaScript is not active in the browser, no count takes place at all — this has no disadvantage for you.

7. Fonts

This website uses the fonts „Cormorant Garamond“ and „Inter“. They are hosted locally on the server and loaded directly from there. There is no connection to third-party servers (such as Google Fonts), and no data are transferred to third parties in this respect.

8. Map display

On the page „Friesdorfer Geschichte" a map of Friesdorf can be displayed. The map is shown only after you explicitly click the button „Karte laden" (load map). All map components — the map images as well as the display software used (Leaflet) — are stored locally on the server of this website. Loading the map therefore establishes no connections to external map services and transfers no data to third parties. The map material is based on OpenStreetMap data (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL).

9. Contact form and getting in touch

A contact form is available on this website. If you use it, the data you enter (name, e-mail address, type of enquiry, subject and content of the message) are transmitted to us and processed exclusively to deal with your enquiry. The transmission takes place by e-mail to our address given above; the form data are not stored in a database on the web server.

To protect against automated abuse (spam), the form contains a simple arithmetic task and a hidden control field. No personal data are transmitted to third parties and no permanent cookies are set in the process. For technical handling, only a short-lived session identifier (session cookie) is used, which expires after the form has been sent.

The same applies if you contact us directly by e-mail. The legal basis for the processing is Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR (answering your enquiry) and, where a contract is being initiated, Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR. The data are deleted as soon as they are no longer required for the purpose and no statutory retention obligations stand in the way.

We handle your message with publishing-management software on our own computer: we keep a copy of the message and of our replies there in the publisher's mail archive, and orders and pre-orders are entered in our customer and order list. The mail archive is synchronised with our iCloud storage (Apple) and thereby backed up. In individual cases we use an AI language model as an aid: to classify a message, to read out a delivery address or to draft a reply to questions on local history that is based solely on our own research material. For this purpose the text of your message – without e-mail address, telephone and account numbers – is transmitted to the provider of the language model, Anthropic PBC (USA). We check and send every reply personally; no automated decision-making takes place. If you do not want this, please write “without AI” (or “ohne KI”) in your message – we will then handle it without a language model. The legal basis is Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR (our legitimate interest in a well-founded and prompt reply). Information on data protection at Anthropic: www.anthropic.com/legal/privacy.

If you reserve a book or a sticker, we add your name, your e-mail address, the reserved title, your message and the time and wording of your consent to our reservation list. We notify you by e-mail as soon as the title is available and remind you of it at most once. The legal basis is your consent (Art. 6 (1) (a) GDPR), which you may withdraw at any time with effect for the future – a short reply “Unsubscribe” is sufficient; we will then delete your reservation. If you do not order, we delete your details no later than three months after the notification; only an anonymous count per title remains. A reservation is not an order and does not oblige you to anything.

If you also selected “Publisher news” when making a reservation, we will occasionally inform you by e-mail about new books and calendars published by Friesdorf-Verlag (Art. 6 (1) (a) GDPR) until you withdraw this consent. Here, too, a short reply is sufficient.

If you place an order with us, we also use your e-mail address to inform you from time to time about our own books and calendars published by Friesdorf-Verlag – for example with a short preview in the shipping notification. The legal basis is Section 7 (3) of the German Act against Unfair Competition (UWG) in conjunction with Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR (our legitimate interest in informing our customers about similar products of our own). You may object to this use at any time without incurring any costs other than the transmission costs at the basic rates – a short message to the address given above or a reply to the e-mail is sufficient. We note your objection in our customer list and will not send you any such information afterwards. You will only receive further advertising if you selected “Publisher news” when making a reservation.

10. Disclosure of data

Your data are not passed on to third parties, except to the host named under section 4 within the scope of data processing on our behalf, to Anthropic PBC within the scope of the AI-assisted handling described under section 9, to Apple as the provider of our iCloud storage (backup of the mail archive, section 9), or where we are legally obliged to do so.

11. Your rights

Under the GDPR you have the right at any time to:

You may object to the use of your e-mail address for information about our own books (section 9) at any time without giving reasons (Art. 21 (2) and (3) GDPR). You may withdraw any consent you have given (reservation, publisher news) at any time (Art. 7 (3) GDPR).

To exercise your rights, a message to the address given above is sufficient.

12. Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority

You have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority about the processing of your personal data. The competent authority is the Landesbeauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit Nordrhein-Westfalen (State Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information of North Rhine-Westphalia), Kavalleriestraße 2–4, 40213 Düsseldorf (www.ldi.nrw.de).

13. Status of this policy

This privacy policy reflects the status of 2026. As soon as the website is extended by further functions such as a newsletter or an online shop, the policy will be adapted accordingly.