A publishing house that began with chaos

His first publishing house at seventeen

It all started early — and, fittingly for that age, with plenty of bravado. At seventeen, Alexander Holtermann founded his first publishing house and gave it a name that sounded like a fresh start: Chaos-Verlag. It was about books, about ideas, about the feeling that print can move something.

A bow, not a battle

Soon there was someone who filled the name “Chaos” with life like no one else: the Chaos Computer Club. When the club politely asked whether it could take the name, Holtermann said yes without hesitation — out of genuine admiration for its work, its attitude, its curiosity, its tireless stand for a self-determined digital society. Some names, he felt, belong where they mean the most.

What remained was the love of books

What stayed was the real driving force: the love of books. Of reading, of writing, of the thought that only finds its final form on paper. Out of that love grew, many years later, a new publishing house — this time with a name that stands for exactly that.

Why Balzac

In his Human Comedy, Honoré de Balzac dissected an entire society — its vanities, its driving forces, its contradictions — at a pace and with a productivity that still astonish today. Holtermann admires that work; and he recognizes much of himself in it: the urge to get to the bottom of things, the multitude of projects, the drive to write down his own picture of the world before it shifts again. Balzac Publishers is a homage to that spirit — a publisher for books that look closely where it gets uncomfortable, and that tell a story where it brings joy.