[imtringued]

Bankruptcy in Germany requires you to attempt to pay off your debts within six years. Any remaining debt gets canceled after those six years pass. This is... not how bankruptcy works in Germany.

For a GmbH and other limited liability companiee there are minimum equity requirements instead.

[hnbad]

The duration for private bankruptcy was recently cut to 3 years so it's a bit faster now at least.

For corporations there's an entire process but in simple terms the company is handed over to an externally appointed handler who tries to generate liquidity by selling off all assets and contacting all debtors and creditors. The company might recover through the process (e.g. by finding an investor) but legally the corporation is frozen and substituted by a separate corporation that only exists to resolve its bankruptcy. If the corporation no longer has any assets, it can also be fast-tracked for being dissolved.