Axel Springer AG
Encyclopedia
Axel Springer AG is one of the largest multimedia companies in Europe
, with more than 11,500 employees and with annual revenues of about €
2.9 billion. The Company is active in a total of 36 countries, including Hungary
, Poland
, the Czech Republic
, Russia
and Germany
, France
, Spain
, Switzerland
. It has more than 230 newspapers and magazines, more than 80 online offerings as well as holdings in television and radio stations.
It was started in 1946/1947 by journalist Axel Springer
. Its current CEO is Mathias Döpfner
. The Axel Springer company is the largest publishing house in Europe and controls the largest share of the German market for daily newspapers; 23.6%, largely because its flagship tabloid Bild is the highest-circulation newspaper in Europe with a daily readership in excess of 12 million.
In addition, the company is active in the online marketing business with its shares in zanox, Digital Window and buy.at
and owns several classified advertising online platforms such as the online career site StepStone
, the real estate marketing portal immonet and price comparising platform idealo
.
. The Axel Springer AG refused to publish advertising campaigns of the Left Party
in 2005 as well as of the socialist PDS in earlier elections.
Major competitors in the German publishing market include Bauer Media Group, Bertelsmann
, Hubert Burda Media
and Holtzbrinck
.
in an incendiary speech at the Freie Universität Berlin; in 1968 their Berlin
headquarters
was blockaded by students; in 1972 the Red Army Faction
claimed responsibility for six bombs placed in the Hamburg
building (only three exploded and 17 people were injured); and in 1975 a bomb exploded in their Paris
office, the "6th of March Group" (connected to the Red Army Faction) claimed responsibility.
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, with more than 11,500 employees and with annual revenues of about €
Euro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...
2.9 billion. The Company is active in a total of 36 countries, including Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, the Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
. It has more than 230 newspapers and magazines, more than 80 online offerings as well as holdings in television and radio stations.
It was started in 1946/1947 by journalist Axel Springer
Axel Springer
Axel Springer , was a German journalist and the founder and owner of the Axel Springer AG publishing company.-Early life:...
. Its current CEO is Mathias Döpfner
Mathias Döpfner
Mathias Döpfner , is Chief Executive Officer of German media group Axel Springer AG.-Family:Mathias Döpfner grew up in Offenbach am Main. His mother was a housewife and his father Dieter C...
. The Axel Springer company is the largest publishing house in Europe and controls the largest share of the German market for daily newspapers; 23.6%, largely because its flagship tabloid Bild is the highest-circulation newspaper in Europe with a daily readership in excess of 12 million.
Newspapers, magazines, online offerings
The media offerings of Axel Springer AG are clustered in: current news, TV program information, autos, sports, computers and consumer electronics, as well as women and lifestyle.Selection of publications
- Die WeltDie WeltDie Welt is a German national daily newspaper published by the Axel Springer AG company.It was founded in Hamburg in 1946 by the British occupying forces, aiming to provide a "quality newspaper" modelled on The Times...
, the intellectual flagship of the company - Bild, newspaper with the largest circulation in Europe
- Auto BildAuto BildAuto Bild is a leading German automobile magazine. It is published by Axel Springer AG, and first appeared in 1986.AUTO BILD with its worldwide licensed editions, of which more than 7 million copies are sold every month, is published in 36 countries. Foreign editions include France's Auto Plus...
, automobile magazine with the largest circulation in Europe - Audio Video Foto Bild, magazine for consumer electronics
- Computer Bild, published in nine countries, is Europe's best-selling computer magazine
- Sport BildSport BildSport Bild is a German sports weekly published every Wednesday. According to its publisher it is Europe's biggest sports magazine with a circulation of almost half million copies....
, published in many countries, is Europe's biggest sport magazine - Auto.cz, the biggest Czech internet car portal including RoadLook.tv, starting in Slovakia and Poland as well
- Fakt, the biggest daily tabloid in Poland
- Hamburger AbendblattHamburger AbendblattThe Hamburger Abendblatt is a daily newspaper in Hamburg, Germany, published by Axel Springer AG. The paper used to appear Monday through Saturday only, but since 29 October 2006 it has also published a Sunday edition to compete with the Hamburger Morgenpost's introduction of a Sunday edition...
, local newspaper - Berliner MorgenpostBerliner MorgenpostBerliner Morgenpost is a German newspaper, based and mainly read in Berlin, where it is the second most read daily newspaper. Founded in 1898 by Leopold Ullstein, it was taken over by Axel Springer AG in 1959. The paper had a circulation of 145,556 issues in 2009, with an estimated 322,000 readers...
, local newspaper - B.Z.B.Z. (newspaper)B.Z. is a German tabloid newspaper, published in Berlin by Ullstein-Verlag, a subsidiary of Axel Springer AG. As of 2010, it has a circulation of around 200,000....
, local newspaper - HörzuHörzuHörzu is a German weekly television listings magazine published by Axel Springer. The magazine first appeared in 1946 as the first radio program magazine to be produced in what was then the British zone of occupation...
, the oldest still existing TV program information magazine in Germany - Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, the intellectual flagship of the company in PolandPolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
- Watchmi, a personalized TV content discovery system
- Musikexpress, a monthly music magazine
- and the German edition of the Rolling StoneRolling StoneRolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
In addition, the company is active in the online marketing business with its shares in zanox, Digital Window and buy.at
Buy.at
buy.at is an affiliate network that was acquired by Digital Window on March 1, 2010 having previously been owned by AOL. It is based in the United Kingdom....
and owns several classified advertising online platforms such as the online career site StepStone
Stepstone
Stepstone, originally named Productivity Products International , was a software company founded in 1983 by Brad Cox and Tom Love, best known for releasing the original version of the Objective-C programming language....
, the real estate marketing portal immonet and price comparising platform idealo
Idealo
The company Idealo Internet GmbH is a price comparison service launched in Germany in 2000, and since bought by the Axel Springer AG publishing company. The headquarters are in Berlin, Germany. The Idealo website allows users to compare prices on a range of products from many shops.-History:The...
.
History
- 1946: Publisher Hinrich Springer (66) and his son Axel (34) establish the limited company Axel Springer Verlag GmbH. Launch of the NORDWESTDEUTSCHE HEFTE and the radio and TV magazine HÖRZU.
- 1948: Launch of the evening newspaper HAMBURGER ABENDBLATT, the first daily created by Axel Springer.
- 1952: Launch of the popular daily BILD.
- 1953: Axel Springer Verlag buys the publishing house DIE WELT, including the daily paper DIE WELT and the Sunday paper WELT am SONNTAG.
- 1956: Company headquarters in Hamburg is built.
- 1959: The company acquires the majority holding in Ullstein AG, including the Berlin newspapers BERLINER MORGENPOST and B.Z. and the Ullstein book-publishing business.
- 1966: Official opening of the Berlin headquarters. Hamburg remains important site.
- 1968: After the attack on the students' leader Rudi Dutschke on 11 April 1968 the APO (Extra-Parliamentary Opposition) starts acts of violence against the company.
- 1972-73: Building of the offset-printing plant in Essen-Kettwig.
- 1984: Official opening of the offset printing facility in Ahrensburg near Hamburg.
- 1985: Axel Springer Verlag AG goes public.
- 1986: The first licensed edition of AUTO BILD comes out in Italy. Other licensed editions and joint venture publications later appear in twenty European countries, Indonesia and Thailand.
- 1993: Official opening of the offset printing works in Berlin-Spandau.
- 2001: Axel Springer and T-Online establish a joint subsidiary Bild.de/T-Online AG.
- 2002: Launch of immonet.de
- 2003: Name is changed to Axel Springer AG
- 2009: Axel Springer AG acquires affiliate marketers Zanox and Digital Window as well as StepStone ASA
- 2010 a $635.7 million offer by Axel for leading French real estate website operator seloger.com caused seloger shares to rise as much as 32% the most since it went public. Within 3 days Axel increased its offer 15.6% to $735 million after seloger shareholders rejected the deal.
Critics
The Axel Springer AG is criticized by many, including German leftists and Muslims because it is openly biased in its support of IsraelIsrael
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. The Axel Springer AG refused to publish advertising campaigns of the Left Party
Left Party (Germany)
The Party of Democratic Socialism was a democratic socialist political party active in Germany from 1989 to 2007. It was the legal successor to the Socialist Unity Party , which ruled the German Democratic Republic until 1990. From 1990 through to 2005, the PDS had been seen as the left-wing...
in 2005 as well as of the socialist PDS in earlier elections.
Major competitors in the German publishing market include Bauer Media Group, Bertelsmann
Bertelsmann
Bertelsmann AG is a multinational media corporation founded in 1835, based in Gütersloh, Germany. The company operates in 63 countries and employs 102,983 workers , which makes it the most international media corporation in the world. In 2008 the company reported a €16.118 billion consolidated...
, Hubert Burda Media
Hubert Burda Media
Hubert Burda Media is a German privately held, family-owned global media company with its origins in printing and magazine publishing. The company is headquartered in Offenburg and Munich, has additional main offices in Berlin and Hamburg and has more than 7400 employees...
and Holtzbrinck
Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck is a Stuttgart-based publishing holding company which owns publishing companies worldwide. Holtzbrinck has published everything from Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses to classics by Agatha Christie, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway and John Updike...
.
Attacks
In the 1960s and 1970s the company was targeted by a number of left-wing groups. It was denounced by German-American writer Reinhard LettauReinhard Lettau
Reinhard Lettau was a German-American writer. He never used his middle name, Adolf, if he could avoid it. He emigrated to the US in the middle of the 1950s and was a professor for German Literature at the University of California, San Diego from 1967. He was an active member of the Group 47...
in an incendiary speech at the Freie Universität Berlin; in 1968 their Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
headquarters
Headquarters
Headquarters denotes the location where most, if not all, of the important functions of an organization are coordinated. In the United States, the corporate headquarters represents the entity at the center or the top of a corporation taking full responsibility managing all business activities...
was blockaded by students; in 1972 the Red Army Faction
Red Army Faction
The radicalized were, like many in the New Left, influenced by:* Sociological developments, pressure within the educational system in and outside Europe and the U.S...
claimed responsibility for six bombs placed in the Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
building (only three exploded and 17 people were injured); and in 1975 a bomb exploded in their Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
office, the "6th of March Group" (connected to the Red Army Faction) claimed responsibility.