Axel Springer SE

Based on Wikipedia: Axel Springer SE

The Media Empire Built on a Cold War Foundation

In the basement archives of American intelligence history lies an uncomfortable allegation: that one of Europe's most powerful media companies may have been built, in part, with CIA money.

Axel Springer SE—the German publishing giant behind tabloid sensation Bild, the intellectual broadsheet Die Welt, and American political news powerhouse Politico—has spent decades shaping what millions of Europeans and Americans read, think, and believe. Today it ranks among the top four digital publishers in the United States, alongside the New York Times and USA Today. Its flagship Bild tabloid commands the largest circulation of any newspaper in Europe, reaching more than twelve million readers daily at its peak.

But the company's origin story involves more than just smart publishing decisions. It involves divided cities, Cold War intrigue, and principles so specific that employees must pledge allegiance to them—or find work elsewhere.

A Father and Son in the Ruins of Germany

The year was 1946. Germany lay in rubble. The Nazi regime had collapsed just a year earlier, and the country was carved into occupation zones controlled by American, British, French, and Soviet forces. In this chaos, sixty-six-year-old publisher Hinrich Springer and his thirty-four-year-old son Axel saw opportunity.

They established Axel Springer Verlag GmbH—"Verlag" being the German word for publishing house—and launched their first publication: Hörzu, originally a radio broadcast guide that would later evolve into a television magazine. It was a modest beginning.

Two years later came the Hamburger Abendblatt, an afternoon and evening newspaper. Then, in 1952, a publication that would define the company's character forever: Bild.

Bild was modeled after the British tabloid Daily Mirror. Bold headlines. Sensational stories. Eye-catching photographs. The formula worked spectacularly. By the 1980s, Bild's circulation had reached five million copies daily—a staggering number that made it the most-read newspaper on the European continent.

Building a Headquarters on the Fault Line

In 1959, with Cold War tensions at their peak, Axel Springer made a symbolic choice that would define his company's political identity for generations.

Two days before a Soviet ultimatum deadline over Berlin expired, Springer laid the foundation stone for new company headquarters. Not in Hamburg, where the company had operated comfortably since 1950. In West Berlin—directly adjacent to the wall that would soon divide the city.

This was not subtle. The building's location was a statement, a concrete rejection of Soviet influence positioned as close to the communist East as architecture and politics would allow. The headquarters opened in 1966, and the company has maintained its Berlin presence ever since, eventually expanding in 2020 with a new cube-shaped campus designed by the famous architect Rem Koolhaas and his firm OMA.

The Student Movement and the Shots That Changed Everything

The late 1960s brought Axel Springer SE its first major crisis of legitimacy.

On June 2, 1967, West Berlin police shot and killed a twenty-six-year-old student named Benno Ohnesorg during a demonstration against the Shah of Iran. Ohnesorg had never attended a protest before. He was shot in the back while trying to leave. The circumstances were damning for the police.

But a Springer newspaper reported the incident this way: "What happened yesterday in Berlin had nothing to do with politics… It was criminal in the most sickening way."

The student movement was incensed. The coverage seemed to blame the victims rather than the authorities. The Extra-Parliamentary Opposition—known in German as the APO—developed a deep animosity toward what they saw as biased, establishment-friendly journalism from the Springer press.

Then came April 11, 1968. A would-be assassin shot student leader Rudi Dutschke in the head. Dutschke survived but suffered lasting brain damage that would contribute to his death eleven years later. The APO blamed Springer's inflammatory coverage for creating the climate of hatred that led to the attack.

Violence erupted against the company. Protesters attacked Springer facilities and delivery trucks. The publisher had become a target in Germany's own turbulent version of the 1960s cultural upheaval that was reshaping societies across the Western world.

The CIA Question

In the early years of the Cold War, American intelligence agencies took an active interest in shaping European media. The Congress for Cultural Freedom, later revealed to be CIA-funded, supported intellectual magazines and cultural initiatives across Western Europe. The goal was to counter Soviet propaganda with pro-Western, pro-American voices.

Did Axel Springer benefit from this largesse?

Two former Central Intelligence Agency officers claimed in an interview with The Nation that Springer received seven million dollars from the agency. The alleged purpose: to influence the publisher to align its editorial content with American geopolitical interests.

No conclusive evidence has emerged to prove these allegations. But scholars have noted that Springer admitted in his autobiography to facing significant financial challenges at the start of his publishing venture. Building a media empire in occupied Germany required capital that a young publisher in a destroyed economy would have struggled to accumulate alone.

Gudrun Kruip, a scholar associated with the Stiftung Bundespräsident-Theodor-Heuss-Haus—a foundation dedicated to the legacy of Germany's first president—has examined the company's history and finds the allegations credible. She notes that Axel Springer SE, along with its subsidiaries, exhibits a consistently pro-American stance, often omitting criticism of United States foreign policy.

The company makes no secret of this orientation today. As of 2001, its official principles explicitly include "solidarity with the libertarian values of the United States of America."

Principles You Must Sign—Or Leave

Most media companies have editorial guidelines. Axel Springer SE has something more like a creed.

When the company acquired Business Insider in 2015, and again when it purchased Politico in 2021, Chief Executive Officer Mathias Döpfner reportedly told incoming staff that they would need to adhere to Axel Springer's core principles. These include support for a united Europe, "reconciliation between Germans and Jews," Israel's right to exist, and a free-market economy.

The message was blunt: "Staff who disagree with the principles should not work for Axel Springer, very clearly."

Döpfner has defended this approach by pointing to Germany's historical context. After the Holocaust, he argues, supporting Israel's right to exist is not political activism but moral necessity. He insists that journalistic integrity remains paramount and that the company's stance "does not equate to uncritical support of Israel."

But critics see something more troubling: a media company that requires ideological conformity from its journalists on controversial geopolitical questions. An article in Foreign Policy has criticized Axel Springer SE for what it describes as a history of compromising journalistic ethics to support right-wing causes.

From Print to Pixels

While navigating these political controversies, Axel Springer SE was also transforming itself from a traditional newspaper publisher into a digital media conglomerate.

The pivot began in earnest in the early 2000s. In 2002, the company launched immonet.de, a real estate listings website—a hint of the classified advertising empire to come. That same year, Mathias Döpfner, the former editor-in-chief of Die Welt, became CEO. He would oversee the company's most dramatic transformation.

Understanding what Döpfner built requires understanding how the internet destroyed traditional newspaper economics. For decades, newspapers made enormous profits from classified advertising—job listings, real estate ads, car sales. When websites like Craigslist and Monster.com moved this business online, newspapers hemorrhaged revenue.

Döpfner's insight was to become the disruptor rather than the disrupted. If digital classifieds were the future, Axel Springer would own them.

In 2009, the company acquired StepStone, a major European job listings platform. In 2010, it purchased SeLoger, a leading French real estate website, for seven hundred thirty-five million dollars after initially bidding six hundred thirty-five million. When shareholders rejected the first offer, Springer simply raised it by fifteen percent.

The buying spree continued. In 2012, Axel Springer formed a joint venture with the private equity firm General Atlantic, creating Axel Springer Digital Classified to house its growing portfolio of classified advertising properties. That same year, the company bought TotalJobs in the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile, Springer was shedding its traditional print assets. In 2013, the company sold its regional newspapers, women's magazines, and television magazines to a competitor, Funke Mediengruppe, for nine hundred twenty million euros. The message was clear: the future was digital.

The American Expansion

Owning European job boards and real estate sites was profitable. But Döpfner had larger ambitions. He wanted Axel Springer to become a major force in American media.

The first significant American acquisition came in September 2015 when Springer bought Business Insider at a valuation of four hundred forty-two million dollars. Business Insider had pioneered a new style of online journalism—quick, accessible, unabashedly clickable. The site mixed business news with celebrity coverage and technology reporting, attracting millions of young readers who had never subscribed to the Wall Street Journal.

Springer eventually increased its ownership to ninety-seven percent, paying an additional three hundred forty-three million dollars for an eighty-eight percent stake.

In October 2020, Axel Springer and its subsidiary Insider Inc. acquired Morning Brew, a startup that had built a devoted following through daily business newsletters written in a conversational, almost irreverent tone. The purchase price was approximately seventy-five million dollars. Morning Brew's founders retained a sizeable minority stake with an earn-out clause—meaning they would receive additional payments if the company hit certain performance targets.

But the biggest American prize came in 2021: Politico.

A Billion Dollars for Political Influence

Politico had revolutionized American political journalism since its founding in 2007. While legacy newspapers struggled to adapt to the internet, Politico embraced the rhythms of digital media—breaking news constantly, cultivating sources obsessively, and building a readership of political insiders who checked the site multiple times daily.

In Washington, Politico's morning newsletters became required reading for staffers, lobbyists, and elected officials. The site didn't just cover politics; it shaped which stories the political class talked about each day.

Axel Springer paid more than one billion dollars for this influence.

The acquisition, completed in October 2021, also gave Springer full control of Politico Europe—a joint venture launched in 2014—and Protocol, a technology news site that Politico had started in 2020. Combined with Business Insider and Morning Brew, the purchase made Axel Springer one of the largest digital publishers in the United States.

The company now ranks among the top four American digital publishers, measured by audience reach. Only USA Today's parent company, News Corp, and the New York Times sit alongside it.

Private Equity Takes Control

As Axel Springer was assembling its American media empire, the company itself was undergoing a profound ownership change.

For decades, the Springer family had controlled the company. Axel Springer died in 1985, just after offering forty-nine percent of the company for public subscription—the initial public offering that made it a traded stock. Control passed to his widow, Friede Springer.

In 2020, two major changes occurred almost simultaneously.

First, Friede Springer transferred approximately one and a half billion dollars worth of Axel Springer shares to CEO Mathias Döpfner. She sold him a 4.1 percent stake and gifted him another fifteen percent, bringing his direct ownership to twenty-two percent. She also transferred voting rights for her remaining twenty-two percent stake to Döpfner. He had effectively become her heir.

Second, the American private equity firm KKR acquired a majority stake in the company. Private equity—if you're unfamiliar with the term—refers to investment firms that buy companies using a combination of their own money and borrowed funds, typically with the goal of restructuring operations and eventually selling at a profit.

The KKR acquisition meant that Axel Springer was no longer primarily a publicly traded company answering to diverse shareholders. It was now controlled by a private equity firm with its own financial objectives.

Since the KKR takeover, Axel Springer's revenues have increased by approximately one billion euros. By the first half of 2023, the company was generating total revenues of about 3.93 billion euros with EBITDA—earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, a measure of operating profitability—increasing by 12.8 percent.

But in July 2024, reports emerged that Axel Springer and KKR were discussing a split. The proposed deal would separate the company's media assets—Politico, Business Insider, Bild, Die Welt—from its digital classifieds operations like StepStone and Aviv, the real estate portal group.

The split was confirmed in September 2024. Axel Springer became a fully privately owned and operated media company, distinct from the classified advertising business that had funded much of its digital transformation.

Scandals and Controversies

As Axel Springer grew, so did scrutiny of its practices.

In March 2021, Der Spiegel—Germany's leading news magazine—reported accusations that Julian Reichelt, the editor of Bild, had promoted several young female employees in exchange for sex and then sought to buy their silence before dismissing them. The New York Times published similar allegations in October 2021.

Axel Springer initially investigated internally and supported Reichelt. But as more details emerged and pressure mounted, the company ultimately fired him.

The Reichelt affair was part of a broader story the New York Times told about the company's culture: accusations of sexual misconduct, sexual discrimination, and questionable business practices at Axel Springer SE. The report painted a picture of a company where power imbalances between male executives and female subordinates had enabled exploitation.

The Israel Question

Perhaps no aspect of Axel Springer's editorial principles generates more controversy than its stance on Israel.

The company's commitment to Israel's right to exist—one of the principles employees must accept—has led to what critics describe as systematically biased coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In 2024, Liz Fekete, a researcher on European racism and fascism, criticized Axel Springer-owned Welt and CEO Mathias Döpfner for what she characterized as anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian bias. She argued that the company's publications falsely suggested Muslim immigrants are the main source of antisemitism in Germany, when in fact the majority of antisemitic incidents are perpetrated by the far-right. She also accused the company of uncritically adopting Israeli government talking points.

German public broadcasting echoed these concerns in 2024, suggesting that Axel Springer takes its pro-Israel mission so far that the company believes "Palestinians and anyone who expresses criticism of Israel must be discredited and then written against." The criticism focused particularly on a news report that doxed—meaning publicly revealed identifying information about—several pro-Palestinian student protesters.

Adding another dimension to the controversy: Axel Springer's Israeli classified ads website Yad2, the largest classifieds site in Israel, publishes real estate listings for properties in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. These settlements are considered illegal under international law. While individuals can use the site for free, real estate brokers and agents pay to list properties—including properties in these disputed territories. Critics argue this means Axel Springer profits from what the international community considers illegal occupation.

The Portfolio Today

Understanding Axel Springer's influence requires surveying the full scope of what it owns.

In Germany, the company's media brands include Bild (the tabloid), Die Welt (the broadsheet), Welt TV (a news channel), Computer Bild (Europe's best-selling computer magazine, published in nine countries), Sport Bild (Europe's largest sports magazine), and the local Berlin newspaper B.Z.

In the United States, the portfolio includes Politico, Business Insider, and Morning Brew.

In Poland, Axel Springer owns Fakt (the country's largest daily tabloid), Newsweek Polska, Onet (an online news publication), and Forbes Women.

Beyond media, the company operates an extensive digital services business. StepStone handles job listings across Europe. Aviv encompasses real estate portals including immonet, immowelt in Germany, and SeLoger in France. Idealo provides price comparison services. Transfermarkt has become the definitive source for football statistics and transfer news. AWIN offers affiliate marketing solutions.

The company, including its subsidiaries, joint ventures, and licenses, operates in more than forty countries.

The Döpfner Era

Since becoming CEO in 2002, Mathias Döpfner has transformed Axel Springer from a German newspaper publisher into a global digital media and technology company. The strategy has been consistent: shed declining print assets, acquire growing digital properties, and expand aggressively into the American market.

Döpfner came to the role from journalism rather than business. He had been editor-in-chief of Die Welt before ascending to the corporate suite. This background shapes how he talks about the company's mission—in terms of editorial principles and societal responsibility rather than purely financial metrics.

But the financial results have followed. When KKR acquired its majority stake in 2020, Döpfner engineered the transaction that made him Friede Springer's effective heir. His twenty-two percent direct stake, combined with voting rights over Friede Springer's shares, gives him control that few CEOs enjoy.

Whether this concentration of power in a single executive—one who insists employees adhere to specific political principles—represents visionary leadership or a troubling consolidation of media influence depends largely on whether you agree with those principles.

What It Means for Journalism

The Axel Springer story raises uncomfortable questions about modern media.

Can a company that requires ideological conformity from employees produce journalism the public can trust? Döpfner argues the principles reflect basic moral commitments that any decent person should accept. Critics counter that journalists should be free to follow evidence wherever it leads, without predetermined conclusions about geopolitical controversies.

Does private equity ownership serve journalism's public mission? KKR's involvement brought capital that funded American acquisitions and digital transformation. But private equity's business model—buy, restructure, sell—operates on timelines that may conflict with the patient relationship-building that quality journalism requires.

What happens when a media company's business interests conflict with its editorial positions? Axel Springer profits from Israeli settlements through Yad2 while its publications defend Israel's policies. The company owns job listing sites while its newspapers cover labor markets. These entanglements create potential conflicts that readers may never see.

And finally: in an era of declining trust in media institutions, what does it mean for one of the world's largest publishers to explicitly embrace political positions as conditions of employment?

Axel Springer SE began as a father-and-son operation in the ruins of postwar Germany. It grew into a publishing house that helped shape West German identity during the Cold War. It transformed into a digital conglomerate that now influences what Americans read about their own politics.

The company's official principles call for solidarity with the United States and support for Israel's right to exist. Its critics see a pattern of ideological journalism dressed in the clothes of neutral reporting. Its defenders see moral clarity in a media landscape too often characterized by false equivalence.

What's certain is this: when you read Politico's morning newsletter, scroll through Business Insider's headlines, or encounter Bild's latest sensation, you're consuming content from an organization with a very specific vision of the world—and the resources to make that vision heard across two continents.