[4][5] He earned his doctorate in law with a dissertation on licensing agreements in publishing at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich the same year.

[3][6] After four years of working in the publishing house and an extended stay in the US, including at Harvard Business School and as a trainee in an American publishing house,[3] he gained experience in the judicial service as a court assessor and later as a judge at the Munich I Regional Court.

[1] At the end of 1970 he returned to the publishing house to take over the legal and economic departments and at the same time the management of the printing works in Nördlingen.

[8] He led the publishing house together with his brother Wolfgang Beck [de] who was responsible for the fiction and non-fiction divisions;[5] they were the sixth generation of management of the family business, in direct succession of the company founder.

[1][2][4][13] In 1989, Beck was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany,[14] in 1992 the München leuchtet [de] medal,[15] in 1993 the honorary award of the Schwabing Art Prize,[16] in 2002 the honorary citizenship of the city of Nördlingen,[17] and in 2012 the Bavarian Order of Merit.