Aldi may appear as if they were a single enterprise with certain store brands or when negotiating with contractor companies. The individual groups were originally owned and managed jointly by the brothers. Karl Albrecht, who died in 2014, retained ownership of Aldi Süd with a personal wealth of €17.2 billion that made him the richest man in Germany. The co-owners of Aldi Nord, Berthold and Theo Albrecht Jr. came close behind at €16 billion. Dieter Schwarz, owner of Lidl and Kaufland came in third, with a fortune of €11.5 billion. Aldi started to expand internationally in 1967, when Aldi Süd acquired
Albrecht Knaus Verlag stressed the independence of all publishers under the umbrella of Random House publishing group. Successor to Dede and Blessing was Karl heinz Bittel. Under Bittel, works of authors such as Pascal Mercier and Georg Oswald were published. Succeeding Claudia Vidoni was Wolfgang Ferchl who became head of Albrecht Knaus Verlag in 2009. Albrecht Knaus Verlag The Albrecht Knaus Verlag (also Knaus Verlag, the company's preferred spelling is KNAUS) is a German publisher of fiction and nonfiction based in Munich. It was founded in 1978 and is now part of the Random House publishing group. The publisher became known mainly through