The story
Founded by Axel Springer in 1946, in Hamburg.1
1940s
In 1946, publisher Hinrich Springer (age 66) and his son Axel Springer (age 34) established the limited company Axel Springer Verlag GmbH. That year saw the launch of the Nordwestdeutsche Hefte and the radio and Hörzu, which was originally launched as a radio broadcast but later became a TV magazine as well.
In 1948, the afternoon and evening newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt was launched, the first daily newspaper created by Axel Springer.
1950s
The year 1952 saw the launch of the popular daily newspaper Bild. The paper was based on the British tabloid Daily Mirror and peaked at a circulation of 5 million in the 1980s. The Sunday paper Bild am Sonntag was launched in 1956.
In 1953, Axel Springer Verlag bought the publishing house Die Welt, including the daily paper Die Welt and the Sunday paper Welt am Sonntag.
Construction on the company headquarters in Hamburg began in 1950 and was completed in 1956.
In 1956, Axel Springer secured a blocking minority in Ullstein Verlag, and three years later he took over the company completely.
ullstein bild is a brand for the photo collection (since 1877), now under Axel Springer Syndication GmbH.
This was followed in 1959 by the purchase of the newspaper Berliner Morgenpost. When Springer took over the Ullstein publishing house in December 1959, the B.Z. also became its property.
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Two days before the end of the Soviet ultimatum in Berlin, Axel Springer laid the foundation stone for the new publishing headquarters on 25 May 1959.
1960s
The official opening of the Berlin headquarters took place in 1966.
After the attack on the student leader Rudi Dutschke on 11 April 1968, the APO (Extra-Parliamentary Opposition) began acts of violence against the company. The APO had a history of animosity with the Springer Group's allegedly biased coverage of the student movement. For instance, in the wake of the killing of Benno Ohnesorg by the police at a student demonstration against the Shah, one Springer paper reported that "what happened yesterday in Berlin had nothing to do with politics …. It was criminal in the most sickening way." In fact, Ohnesorg, who had never attended a demonstration before, had been shot in the back while trying to leave the demonstration.
1970s
The years 1972 and 1973 saw the building of the offset-printing plant in Essen-Kettwig.
1980s
1984 witnessed the official opening of the offset printing facility in Ahrensburg near Hamburg.
In 1985, 49% of the company was offered for public subscription, marking the IPO of Axel Springer. Later that year, Axel Springer died; control of the company was transferred to his widow Friede Springer.
In 1986, the first licensed edition of Auto Bild came out, in Italy. Other licensed editions and joint venture publications later appeared in twenty European countries, Indonesia and Thailand.
1990s
In 1993, there was the official opening of the offset printing works in Berlin-Spandau.
In May 1999, Axel Springer bought a 51% majority stake in the American television production company GRB Entertainment, but was later divested in 2002.
2000s
In 2001, Axel Springer and T-Online established a joint subsidiary Bild.de/T-Online AG. A year later in 2002, the launch of immonet.de took place, Mathias Doepfner, former editor-in-chief of Die Welt, became CEO of Axel Springer AG, and Giuseppe Vita became Chairman of the Supervisory Board, serving until 2019. Then in 2003, the name was changed to Axel Springer AG.
In 2009, Axel Springer AG acquired affiliate marketers Zanox and Digital Window as well as StepStone ASA.
2010s
In 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 shareholders rejected the deal.
In 2012, Axel Springer formed a joint venture (Axel Springer Digital Classified) with global growth equity firm General Atlantic. The company also bought TotalJobs in the UK from Reed Elsevier that year.
In 2013, Springer sold its regional newspapers, women's magazines, and television magazines to Funke Mediengruppe for €920 million That same year, Publications Grand Public, a French magazine publisher owned by Springer, was sold to Reworld Media. The German television newsbroadcaster N24 was acquired by Axel Springer SE and combined with Die Welt.
2020–present
In 2020, Friede Springer transferred $1.5 billion of Axel Springer shares to CEO Mathias Dopfner, effectively making him heir of the media group. Under the arrangement, Friede Springer sold a 4.1% stake to Dopfner and gifted him 15% more- bringing Dopfner's direct stake of the company to 22%. She also transferred voting rights to Dopfner for her remaining 22% in the business. In October of the same year, the company expanded its Berlin headquarters with the completion of the Axel Springer Campus, a cube-shaped office building designed by Rem Koolhaas and OMA.
In October 2021, an article in The New York Times reported accusations of sexual misconduct, sexual discrimination and questionable business practices at Axel Springer SE. A day later, the publisher fired the editor-in-chief of Bild.
In July 2024, reports emerged that Axel Springer and private equity group KKR were in talks to potentially split the media conglomerate. The proposed deal would separate the group's media assets, including Politico, Business Insider, Bild, and Die Welt, from its digital classifieds operations such as StepStone and Aviv. The split was confirmed in September 2024 and Axel Springer became a fully privately owned and operated media company.
In March 2026, the company made an offer to acquire the Telegraph Media Group in a deal estimated at £575 million.
From Wikipedia’s article on Axel Springer SE, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5