Of course it's not impossible.
Publishers around the world buy foreign rights just as German publishers do - it's why large publishers have their own departments and external agents to sell their rights. Listing them here would mean nothing less but re-creating half of the exhibitor's listing of the Frankfurt Bookfair (if you are looking for names and addresses, the catalogue is the place to find them - it can be bought in Frankfurt during the fair)
However, you can find a couple of names of publishers who bought the rights to my "Projekt Babylon" here:
http://www.andreaswilhelm.info/buecher/babylon.html (scroll down the page)
 
Good luck,
 
Andreas

If you think my point is not helpful, I'd appreciate if you'd say so directly. You asked for help and my advice / experience / information is what I can give.
 
Selling foreign rights to UK/USA is a totally different story. In short: If you're not on the bestselling list: forget it - but good luck anyway if you want to try it on your own.
 
Many publishers in the US won't even accept manuscripts from US authors unless they are represented by an agent. The pool to select from is by far larger that it is in Germany, on top of that the quota of foreign translations on the English speaking market is much smaller than it is in Gemany. That makes trying to sell foreign rights to them unequally more difficult than selling them a manuscript in the first place. What is bought is picked from the bestselling lists from all around the world - why should they settle for anything less?
 
I sincerely doubt that by collecting publisher's names you can do any better job than the license departments of the large publishers and their foreign rights agents abroad already do with their standing. You will most probably not be able to tell them anything they don't already know nor point them to a lot of publishers they have not already considered. If you think you can do it, maybe you should consider becoming an agent yourself and become the first to succeed in what none of the others have succeeded in so far.
 
As to publishers from other countries: I pointed you to some of them on my website.
 
Andreas

Zitat von Natalja am 07.06.10 um 13:20:

 
In my opinion this is a fairy tale, sorry. I do know about a couple of extremely successful German books in the last decade (million sellers with international setting!) and they never made it to the US or UK.  
 
Zitat von Natalja am 07.06.10 um 13:20:

 
Yes, that is exactly what I'm doing.  I just hoped to get a little bit more input from others.  

Zitat von KathrinS am 07.06.10 um 19:09:

 
A little misunderstanding. I'm not interested in topics, I'm looking for names and adresses of foreign publishers who already have published German authors of thrillers and historical novels. But, don't mind, I already found what I had looked for.

@Angelika:  Thank you very much!