(1) The insolvency court is required to investigate ex officio all circumstances relevant to insolvency proceedings. In particular, the court may hear witnesses and experts for this purpose.
(2) If the debtor’s financial circumstances are comprehensible and if the number of creditors or the amount of the obligations is low, the proceedings are conducted as written proceedings. The insolvency court may order that the proceedings or individual stages in the proceedings be conducted as oral proceedings if this is expedient to further the course of the proceedings. It may rescind or change such order at any time. Such order, its rescission or amendment is to be published.
(3) The court may render its decisions without an oral hearing. If an oral hearing is held, section 227 (3) sentence 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure does not apply.
(4) Tables and records may be prepared and processed automatically. The governments of the Länder are empowered to establish more detailed provisions by way of a statutory instrument regarding the keeping of such tables and records, their electronic submission, as well as the electronic submission of accompanying documents and their storage. They may also establish requirements regarding the data formats required for electronic submission. The governments of the Länder may delegate such power to the Land departments of justice.
(5) Insolvency administrators are, as a rule, to hold available an electronic creditor information system which can be used to make available to each insolvency creditor to have filed a claim, in a standard file format, all the decisions given by the insolvency court, all the reports sent to the insolvency court which do not exclusively concern the claims of other creditors and all the documents concerning their own claims. If the debtor satisfies at least two out of the three criteria referred to in section 22a (1) in the previous business year, then the insolvency administrator must hold available an electronic creditor information system and make the documents referred to in sentence 1 available without delay for electronic retrieval. The administrator without delay provides those entitled to inspect the files access to the necessary data.