Privacy

Controller

The controller responsible for the data processing on this website is David Vaupel, Hamburger Chaussee 30, 14641 Nauen OT Lietzow, Germany, email: menelaus@alte-brennerei-ribbeck.de. Further details are given in the legal notice.

Hosting & Server Logs

The website is operated at Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc., 101 Townsend Street, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA; services “Workers” and “R2”). Every request runs through Cloudflare's worldwide network and is usually answered at the nearest location. Technically necessary data is processed in the course of this (IP address, time, requested address, browser identifier). Legal basis: Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR (DSGVO) (legitimate interest in stable and secure operation).

Cloudflare keeps logs of the requests to the application; according to Cloudflare they are deleted after seven days at most. To ward off automated access, Cloudflare inserts a small check script into the pages which runs in the browser, evaluates characteristics of the browser and sends the result to Cloudflare. In an ordinary visit Cloudflare sets neither a cookie nor local storage (last measured on 13 October 2026). Only if an additional check applies may Cloudflare place a cookie (“cf_clearance”) in the browser; it remains stored for up to one year and cannot be read by scripts of the page. According to Cloudflare it serves solely to detect automated access.

Processing takes place under a data processing agreement pursuant to Art. 28 DSGVO. Data may be transferred to the USA; Cloudflare is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, and EU Standard Contractual Clauses apply in addition.

Individual parts run on the provider's own servers in Germany (Hetzner Online GmbH, Industriestr. 25, 91710 Gunzenhausen): the provider's own visitor statistics, the handling of enquiries and the creation of invoices. A data processing agreement is also in place with Hetzner.

Newsletter

When signing up for the notification distribution list, the email address is stored via the delivery service provider Resend (Resend Inc., 2261 Market Street #4471, San Francisco, CA 94114, USA); address and language preference are additionally stored at Cloudflare. Legal basis: Art. 6 para. 1 lit. a DSGVO (consent). The consent can be withdrawn at any time by email to the address named in the legal notice; the entry is then deleted. The sign-up only takes effect once the confirmation link sent by email has been clicked (double opt-in); without confirmation, the entry lapses.

Resend processes personal data on the basis of the EU Standard Contractual Clauses and a data processing agreement.

Payment Processing (Stripe & PayPal)

Purchases in the Kontor are processed via the payment service provider Stripe (Stripe Payments Europe, Ltd., 1 Grand Canal Street Lower, Grand Canal Dock, Dublin, Ireland). When the Kontor and the personalisation page are opened, no connection to Stripe is established yet. Only when an element on the page receives focus (for example when a field is tapped) or the payment is started does the page load Stripe scripts; the IP address is transmitted in doing so. Stripe may set cookies or local storage for fraud prevention and for processing. This is strictly necessary for the payment you requested (Section 25(2) no. 2 TDDDG), no consent is needed. The data processing is based on Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR. In the payment step, Stripe's payment form is loaded directly on the page; the payment data entered in the form (e.g. card details) is transmitted directly to Stripe. Once the box on immediate delivery has been ticked, Stripe also receives the order details: the edition chosen, the amount, the email address, in the case of a gift the recipient's address, the name of the giver and the greeting, in the case of a dedication its text, and the time and version of the consent to immediate delivery. Legal basis: Art. 6 para. 1 lit. b DSGVO (performance of a contract) and lit. f (fraud prevention and a swift payment step). Stripe stores the data in accordance with its own statutory retention periods.

A transfer to third countries (in particular the USA) may take place; Stripe bases this on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses and the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. Details: stripe.com/privacy.

PayPal can also be chosen as a payment method. If PayPal is selected, a redirect to PayPal takes place (PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. et Cie, S.C.A., 22-24 Boulevard Royal, L-2449 Luxembourg); the data required for payment is processed there. PayPal is an independent controller in this respect and processes the data for its own purposes (among others payment processing and fraud prevention). Legal basis: Art. 6 para. 1 lit. b DSGVO (performance of a contract) and lit. f (fraud prevention). A transfer to third countries may take place; PayPal bases this on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses and the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. Details: paypal.com/de/legalhub/privacy-full.

Order Fulfilment, Delivery Emails & Invoices

To deliver a purchase, the data provided during the ordering process is processed: the email address for delivery and receipt emails, in the case of a gift purchase additionally the recipient's address, the name of the giver and an optional greeting, and in the case of a booked dedication its text. The time and version of the consent to immediate delivery declared in the payment step are also recorded. The delivered files carry a personal identifier consisting of email address and order number (see Terms).

Order data, the personally marked files and invoices are stored at Cloudflare (service “R2”). Order data and invoices remain stored for the duration of the statutory retention periods. The personally marked files including the dedication are currently kept without a fixed period so that they can be sent again; they are deleted on request. The invoice is created on the provider's own server at Hetzner. Delivery and receipt emails are sent via the provider Resend named above, which processes email address, content and attachments in doing so. Legal basis: Art. 6 para. 1 lit. b DSGVO (performance of a contract) and lit. c (legal obligations). The email address is required for the purchase; without it the files cannot be delivered.

Withdrawal Function

A withdrawal can be declared electronically via “Withdraw from contract”. The name, the details identifying the contract and the email address for the acknowledgement of receipt are processed. The declaration is sent to the provider by email, the acknowledgement of receipt by email to the address given; both run via Resend and are handled like an enquiry via the contact form (see there). Legal basis: Art. 6 para. 1 lit. c DSGVO in conjunction with section 356a of the German Civil Code (BGB) and lit. b (handling of the contract). To protect against abuse, the bot detection Cloudflare Turnstile runs here as well (see AI Conversations); it is loaded when the form is first tapped, legal basis in this respect Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f DSGVO; the bot detection protects the function that was expressly requested (section 25 (2) no. 2 TDDDG). A withdrawal can also be declared by email instead. The declaration is kept for as long as is necessary to prove the withdrawal and under statutory retention obligations.

Visitor Statistics

To see how often the site is visited and which content is read, one counting service runs on all pages. It sets no cookies, stores no identifier in the browser and builds profiles across several days or across other websites. Only aggregated figures are evaluated. The legal basis is the legitimate interest in data-minimising audience measurement (Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f DSGVO).

Own visitor statistics (GoatCounter). The open-source software GoatCounter is self-hosted at stats.meluciolabs.de, on a server of Hetzner Online GmbH in Germany; no transfer to a third country takes place. A small script transmits, on each page view, the address visited including any address suffix (the part after the question mark), the page title, the referring page (referrer) and the screen width. The server adds browser and operating system and the country derived from the IP address. The IP address itself is not stored. So that several views within one visit are not counted twice, a check value is formed from IP address and browser identifier; it is held in memory only and discarded after a few hours. The counting data contains nothing that leads back to a person and is currently kept without a fixed deletion period.

Cloudflare delivers and protects the site (see the hosting section) but does not count visitors with a script of its own. An objection to the audience measurement can be lodged at any time (Art. 21 DSGVO); an informal message to the controller is sufficient. The counter can also be blocked with common content blockers in the browser; the site then works unchanged.

Contact Form and Email

Data transmitted via the contact form (name, email address, subject, message) is used exclusively to answer the enquiry. Technically, the message passes three stations: it is sent via the provider Resend (Resend Inc., USA, see Newsletter), received via the email service of Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc., USA), and handled in the provider's own case system on the server at Hetzner in Germany. The same applies to emails sent directly to an address of this website. Cloudflare logs sender and recipient, and in the case of suspected spam or delivery errors also the subject, for seven days at most. Data is not passed on to other third parties.

Legal basis: Art. 6 para. 1 lit. b and f DSGVO. Once the conversation has been concluded, the data is deleted unless statutory retention obligations apply. Resend and Cloudflare process the data as processors; according to its own statements, Cloudflare relies on a data processing agreement that is part of its terms of service (Art. 28 GDPR). For the transfer to the USA: according to its own statements, Cloudflare is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (adequacy decision of the EU Commission); the EU standard contractual clauses apply in the alternative. For Resend, the EU standard contractual clauses and, where certified, the Data Privacy Framework apply.

AI Conversations on this Website

The website offers voluntary AI features that allow writing in the character of figures from the books. The texts entered and technical connection data are transmitted to Cloudflare to generate the answer and processed there (Cloudflare, Inc., 101 Townsend Street, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA; services “Workers AI” and “AI Gateway”). In the AI Gateway, neither questions nor answers are logged or cached. No user account is created. If the weather is asked about in the conversation, the place name given in the question is sent to the weather service Open-Meteo (open-meteo.com); the visitor's IP address is not transmitted in doing so.

To improve the feature, the question entered and the answer generated are stored together with the time, the language and a random session identifier. The identifier is created in the browser when the first message is sent, applies only to the respective browser window and ends when it is closed; it serves solely to keep the questions of one conversation together during evaluation. Name, email address or IP address are not stored with the conversation. These records are deleted after 90 days.

A backup of the records is made daily (at Cloudflare, without the session identifier, deleted there after 7 days) and copied to the provider's own backup device in Germany. An entry is removed from all backups no later than 30 days after the record has been deleted.

To protect against overload, a daily limit per connection applies. For this purpose a check value (hash) is formed from the IP address and stored with a counter for two days at most; the IP address itself is not stored, and the check value is not kept with the conversations. To protect against automated abuse, the bot detection Cloudflare Turnstile also runs: it is loaded only when the chat's input field is tapped, works without puzzles and without cookies, and evaluates characteristics of the browser and the IP address for this purpose.

Legal basis: Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f DSGVO (legitimate interest in an interactive offering around the books, in improving it and in protecting it against abuse); use is voluntary. The bot detection protects the chat that was expressly requested (section 25 (2) no. 2 TDDDG). A transfer to third countries (USA) may take place; Cloudflare bases this on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses and the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

Depending on the feature, conversation histories or individual settings (such as one's own reading progress) are stored exclusively locally in the browser of one's own device (in so-called Local Storage) so that they remain usable after changing or reloading the page. This data does not leave the device; stored conversation histories are removed automatically after 30 days. Where a history is offered, it can be viewed via the “History” button and deleted completely at any time; clearing the browser data also removes all locally stored data. There is no server-side memory beyond individual conversations.

Please do not enter personal or sensitive data in the chat. The feature does not need it.

Map (OpenStreetMap)

On the page “The Place”, a map from OpenStreetMap can be displayed. The map is loaded only after a click on “Load map”; before that, no connection to OpenStreetMap is made. When loading, technical connection data (in particular the IP address) is transmitted to servers of the OpenStreetMap Foundation (St John’s Innovation Centre, Cowley Road, Cambridge, CB4 0WS, United Kingdom). An adequacy decision of the EU Commission exists for the United Kingdom. Legal basis: Art. 6 para. 1 lit. a DSGVO; consent is given by the click and applies only to the respective page view. Further information in the privacy policy of the OpenStreetMap Foundation.

Fonts & Cookies

This website uses exclusively fonts embedded locally, on its own server: “EB Garamond”, “Cinzel” and “Great Vibes” as well as further locally delivered fonts for readability and the dedication preview (among others “Atkinson Hyperlegible”), each under the free SIL Open Font License. No Google Fonts or other external font services are loaded; no font-related data is therefore transmitted to third parties when a page is viewed. The website itself sets no cookies. Stored in the browser are only one's own display settings (such as font size, typeface, light/dark), the data of the AI conversations (histories for up to 30 days or the reading progress, deletable at any time, and the session identifier for the lifetime of the browser window) and cached page content for offline use. Cloudflare may set the cookie “cf_clearance” during an additional check (see Hosting), and Stripe may set cookies for fraud prevention during a purchase (see above). No tracking cookies are set. There is currently no cookie banner.

Rights of Data Subjects

The rights of access (Art. 15 DSGVO), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction of processing (Art. 18), data portability (Art. 20) and objection (Art. 21) apply. Requests can be sent informally to the email address named in the legal notice.

Right to object: Where data is processed on the basis of a legitimate interest (Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f DSGVO), an objection to this processing may be lodged at any time on grounds relating to the particular situation of the data subject.

There is also the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority (Art. 77 DSGVO).

As of: October 2026