In 1989 she became the first woman after 164 years to accept an appointment as "Vorsteherin" (head) of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German book trade association).
[1][2][3][4][5] Dorothee Margarete Helene Ursula Maier was born into a publishing dynasty,[6][7] slightly less than three years after the Hitler government took power, at Bad Waldsee, a small lakeside town in the hills north of Lake Constance and the frontier with Switzerland.
Reflecting and by some criteria outperforming the benign economic conditions prevailing in West Germany at that time, the business was embarking on a period of expansion under the leadership (since 1953) of her cousin Otto Julius Maier.
[11] As the children began to become less dependent she teamed up with her cousin, Otto Julius Maier in 1978 to head up jointly the company's Books and Games publishing business.
[15] She retained her seat at the company's top table following changes in its legal structure and status: it became a "Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung" (GmbH) in 1981 and an "Aktiengesellschaft" (AG) in 1988.
[12] For five years from 1995 Hess-Maier served as "Sprecherin" (loosely, the "public face") of the three person board of directors at the business which by this time had become Ravensburger AG.
Her place was taken, in 2015, by Alfred Hess, her son[3][17] Since 1986 Dorothee Hess-Maier has been a member of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German book trade association) executive committee.