Axel Springer

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

In the late 1960s, Springer entered into confrontation with the emergent New Left. Hostile coverage of student protests and a continuing rightward drift in editorial comment were met with boycotts and printing-press blockades, and later in 1972 with the bombing of the company offices by the Red Army Faction. In the late 1970s, exposés of journalistic malpractice by the investigative reporter Günter Wallraff led to Press Council reprimands. Sometimes referred to as Germany's Rupert Murdoch, Springer, with counter suits and minor divestments, was able to ride out public criticism of his editorial ethics and market dominance. Springer engaged in private diplomacy in Moscow in 1958 and, with greater recognition, in Jerusalem in 1966 and 1967. In addition to promotion and defence of the values of the 'Western family of nations' and NATO, Springer declared 'reconciliation of Jews and Germans and support for the vital rights of the State of Israel' to be a leitmotif of his company's journalism.

Reader's Guide

After the war, in 1946, Springer founded his own publishing company, Axel Springer GmbH, in Hamburg publishing the radio (and later TV) listings magazine Hörzu. Never having worn a uniform (thanks to asthma and diabetes) or been a member of the Nazi party, Springer was able to obtain from the British occupation authorities a license to run a newspaper. His first daily was the Hamburger Abendblatt. Competing in Hamburg with the five other dailies, Springer offered a paper he described as 'geared to the underdog and the little man', and perfected a formula he launched on the national market in 1952 with Bild Zeitung. Fed a tabloid mix of sensation, scandal, celebrity, sports and horoscopes, the Bild readership peaked in the mid-1960s at 4.5 million. It had the largest circulation of any newspaper in Western Europe or North America. Bild allowed Springer the luxury of his 1953 acquisition, the national broadsheet Die Welt, a loss maker but a rival to the newspapers of record, and the Süddeutsche Zeitung. In 1956, Springer secured a 26% share in Berlin's prestigious Ullstein publishing house, which in 1952 had been restored to the Jewish family who had originally owned it. He became the majority shareholder at the end of 1959 acquiring, among other titles, the Berliner Morgenpost.

Did You Know?

• Springer joined the National Socialist Motorist Corps (NSKK) in 1934, a paramilitary organization that wore uniforms, though he later claimed it was to secure a 'Nazi-uniformed buffer' for his family.
• In 1933, Springer married Martha Else Meyer, whose father was Jewish; they divorced in 1938, partly because the marriage would bar him as an editor under Nazi race laws.
• Springer traveled to Moscow in 1958 with chief editor Hans Zehrer, proposing German neutrality and a nuclear-free Central Europe, but the trip convinced him to support the Western alliance.
• There are unconfirmed rumors that Springer received covert CIA funding of some $7 million in the early 1950s, but the source article notes the case is circumstantial.