Four insolvencies in six years raise a question that reaches far beyond Galeria: What happens when organisations repeatedly cope with a conflict without ever resolving its actual cause?

The story of Galeria is a story of repeated rescue attempts. Insolvency proceedings, changes of ownership, debt write-offs, store closures, new financing and restructuring programmes gave the company one thing time and again: time.

Yet time is not a solution.

It only gains its value when it is used to change the causes of a crisis.

Four insolvencies – different triggers, one recurring problem

The four insolvency proceedings had different immediate triggers.

The immediate causes differ. The repetition itself, however, compels a different perspective.

Perhaps the decisive insight lies in no longer asking solely about the respective trigger.

For when crises recur under changing owners, differing economic conditions and after several restructurings, a deeper-lying conflict may exist behind the problems visible in each case.

Treating symptoms – or resolving conflicts?

Under acute pressure, conflict management often follows an understandable logic.

What is immediately existential is dealt with first: liquidity, costs, staff, rents, contracts and financing.

That is necessary.

Yet therein lies a danger. Operational problems can often be identified and addressed faster than strategic conflicts. Financing can create liquidity. A store closure can reduce costs. A debt write-off can relieve a balance sheet.

But none of these measures, taken on its own, answers the question of what a company will be needed for in future.

This may be precisely where Galeria's deeper conflict lies.

The classic department store must assert its place in a retail world that has fundamentally changed. Online retail offers almost unlimited choice and permanent availability. Specialist retailers compete through specialisation and advice. Shopping centres combine retail, gastronomy and experience. Brands increasingly communicate and sell directly to their customers.

The department store is therefore not merely engaged in a price or cost competition. It faces a question of identity: What distinctive function should the department store fulfil in the 21st century?

The deeper conflict was therefore possibly not solely a financing problem.

It was – and is – a problem of identity.

The decision of 2024

After the insolvency of January 2024, various investor concepts were under discussion.

The contract was ultimately awarded to the consortium of the US investment company NRDC around Richard Baker and the holding company of Bernd Beetz. The investors pledged to continue a large part of the then stores and thereby preserve numerous jobs.

Seen from the situation at the time, these were weighty arguments.

A decision must be judged by the information and options available at the time it was made – not solely by knowledge that only became available later.

It would therefore be too simple to conclude retrospectively from the 2026 insolvency that the 2024 investor decision was wrong.

The development does, however, permit a different question, one far more interesting for conflict management: By what criteria do we actually judge the quality of a solution in a crisis?

Or must we ask more insistently which concept appears capable of changing a company's structural conflict in the long term?

Experience is no guarantee of success – but a resource for decision-making

Among the interested parties in the 2024 insolvency proceedings was the RE-Think consortium, represented principally by Prof. Dr. Helmut Merkel.

Merkel knew the department store business from his own years of responsibility. He knew not only figures, market analyses and concepts, but also the structures, decision-making paths and historical developments of the company and the sector.

At this point, allow me a personal remark.

I know Helmut Merkel from personal collaboration. My regard for his professional competence, his exceptional knowledge of the sector and his ability to assess developments in their economic, organisational and strategic contexts is therefore also founded on my own experience.

It is precisely this personal proximity, however, that demands a clear distinction.

From my assessment of his competence it cannot be inferred that the concept he represented would with certainty have spared Galeria a further insolvency.

We do not know that alternative history.

The development since 2024 permits no such retrospective certainty. It does, however, permit the question of what weight deep experiential and sector knowledge should be given in evaluating restructuring concepts.

Experience guarantees no correct decision. But it can help to perceive dependencies, developments and risks that balance sheets, financing commitments and store guarantees can reflect only to a limited extent.

Particularly in companies whose crisis is not solely financial but structural in nature, this knowledge can be an important resource for decision-making.

It is therefore not a matter of rewriting the 2024 investor decision after the fact. It is a matter of the more fundamental question: How do decision-makers in an acute crisis recognise the difference between a concept that initially secures survival and a concept that at the same time creates the conditions for a new future?

Money can buy time – but cannot guarantee a future

In June 2026, Galeria received new credit financing of up to 160 million euros. It was intended to give the company additional financial room for manoeuvre for its further transformation.

Only a few months later, the fourth insolvency application followed.

No hasty causality should be constructed from this sequence of events alone. But it illustrates a fundamental problem: Liquidity creates room for manoeuvre. It does not yet create a viable business model.

Money can buy time. But it cannot decide, in place of an organisation, what that time is used for.

The underestimated dimension of the conflict: time

Alongside the operational and the strategic conflict, a third dimension thus appears: time.

In 2020, the insolvency proceedings bought time. In 2022, time was gained once more. In 2024, a further restructuring attempt began under new owners. In 2026, the same fundamental question arises again.

Not only: How much time remains? But: What happens with the time gained?

Organisations can survive crises and nevertheless preserve the causes of their crises. That is one of the most difficult insights of conflict management.

For successful short-term crisis management can create the impression that the conflict itself has been resolved.

When successful crisis management becomes the problem

Here may lie an even more fundamental insight.

Organisations develop procedures, routines and institutions to make conflicts manageable. These structures are indispensable. They create stability, reduce uncertainty and enable decisions.

Yet it is precisely their functioning that can create a danger. A system can become successful at coping with the consequences of its conflicts – and in doing so overlook that the conflict itself has remained unresolved.

Then the repeated management of a crisis is mistaken for its resolution.

The problem is no longer that no instruments are available. On the contrary: the instruments may work so well that they buy time again and again. But they no longer answer the question of whether the reality has changed to which these instruments were originally geared.

This gives rise to a paradox:

The successful administration of a conflict can itself become an obstacle to its resolution.

Not because procedures, structures or institutions are wrong. But because they can become ends in themselves when the question is no longer asked which conflict they are actually meant to resolve.

Who bears responsibility?

After a fourth insolvency, the search for those responsible is an obvious step. Owners? Management? Insolvency administrators? Creditors? Landlords? Advisers? Or those who clung to a business model whose economic preconditions had fundamentally changed?

The question of responsibility must be asked. But it should not be hastily confused with the search for culprits.

Responsibility in complex organisations is frequently distributed. Decisions arise under time pressure, informational uncertainty and conflicting interests. What preserves jobs can at the same time impede a necessary downsizing. What secures liquidity can limit scope for investment. What seems economically sensible in the short term can be strategically inadequate in the long term.

The more demanding task is therefore not to identify a single responsible party after the fact. It is to understand which decisions, structures and assumptions contributed to the same fundamental conflict recurring despite changing actors.

Responsibility then means not only managing a crisis. Responsibility also means making its recurrence less likely.

The real question

Perhaps, then, the fourth insolvency itself is not the most important news. The more important question is: Was the conflict over the future of the department store resolved in the past six years – or was it administered across several insolvency proceedings?

Four insolvencies within six years do not necessarily indicate the failure of individual people. They may rather be the expression of a conflict between a historical business model and a changed reality.

As long as this conflict remains unresolved, the crisis can return – regardless of who currently owns the company, who leads it or who secures its financing.

Companies rarely fail because they lose their past. They come into danger when they can no longer convincingly describe their future.

Galeria's fourth insolvency is therefore more than the repetition of an economic crisis. It poses a question that points far beyond Galeria: Do organisations learn from recurring conflicts – or do they merely become ever more professional at coping with their consequences?

Time, capital, procedures and restructuring can create room for manoeuvre. But they cannot resolve the strategic conflict in its place.

Perhaps that is the real lesson of the Galeria case: An unresolved conflict does not disappear merely because its consequences become temporarily manageable. And time resolves no conflict. It gains its value only when it is used to change the conflict's causes.

Conflicts do not end because their symptoms disappear. Their resolution begins where an organisation is prepared to acknowledge the reality that gave rise to the conflict – and to draw consequences from it for its future.

F. P. Zeuner