Axel Springer and Freedom
The founder and his publishing house look back on a long history of commitment to freedom and democracy, against great odds and always on the side of the dissidents
“Unity and justice and freedom for the German fatherland!” This is how the lyrics of the German national anthem begin. On May 25, 1959, at the laying of the cornerstone for his Berlin publishing house, Axel Springer (1912-1985) pronounced three words from the anthem loud and clear, each accompanied by a hammer blow: unity – justice – freedom. Each of these three words are characteristic of Springer’s thoughts and actions as a publisher and as a human being.
However, he preferred a different order: For him, freedom came first.
Axel Springer believed that freedom meant the freedom of every individual to live their life and to make decisions freely. He also believed it was the responsibility of the state to ensure just that, and that it was the job of the media to stand up for the value of freedom. This is shown by quotes from speeches, interviews, and letters, but is also reflected in his publishing decisions.
The great attention paid by Axel Springer to the contrast between freedom and unfreedom, but also to the conceptual pairs of right and wrong and unity and separation, originated and were shaped by his own experiences with the Nazi regime and the establishment of a democratic society after 1945, discussions with his peers, and by current events.
When the “Kuratorium Unteilbares Deutschland” (Board of Trustees for an Indivisible Germany) launched the “Macht das Tor auf!” (Open the Gate) fundraising campaign in November 1958 – to protest against the division of Germany and the lack of freedom in the GDR, as well as the increasing “strangulation” of Berlin – the publisher himself stood on the street in Hamburg with a collecting tin and pinned the campaign’s symbol, a stylized Brandenburg Gate on the tip of a pin, to his lapel.
Months later, Axel Springer laid the cornerstone for his new publishing headquarters in West Berlin, just a few meters from the Soviet sector: to send a signal that the Federal Republic would not abandon the free part of Berlin. He believed in a united Germany with Berlin as its capital. Which is why he invested in Berlin, even after the Berlin Wall was built in 1961.
This event heightened the publisher’s keen sense of freedom. Axel Springer urged his newspapers to report regularly on conditions in the GDR so that the Germans behind the Wall would not be forgotten. He also wanted to convey to readers “our standpoint on freedom and self-determination”. He regularly spoke about the conditions in the other part of Germany at meetings with politicians or in speeches.
When Axel Springer heard about escape stories, he sometimes offered his personal help. In 1963, he began to donate money privately for the release of political prisoners from the GDR, without making it public. His motto was “Do good and don’t talk about it.”
The publisher, as well as the non-profit Axel Springer Foundation, also supported institutions and initiatives that took care of victims of oppression. Axel Springer explained his motivation in a 1973 interview in “L’Express”, a French magazine: “As a German, I am particularly sensitive when free people are imprisoned. We must do everything we can to help them, to open their prisons.”
As early as October 1967, in a speech about the responsibility of his publishing house, Axel Springer laid down for the first time four basic principles for the journalistic work of his editorial staff, which he referred to as the “Essentials”. The first point was: to stand up unconditionally for the peaceful restoration of German unity in freedom.
Axel Springer did not live to see the fall of the Berlin Wall and with it the end of unfreedom in the GDR. But even after his death in 1985, freedom remained a central subject of the publishing house and still is today in the now digital media and technology company. Herbert Kremp, long-standing editor-in-chief and publisher of WELT, wrote in WELT AM SONNTAG on November 12, 1989: “The people in the GDR, who, like a beardless Barbarossa, were thought to be dreaming in alcoves and arbors, have risen up and are demanding not only free travel, but simply and precisely freedom. What we are witnessing is not a citizens’ protest that can be pacified with a ticket and a piece of roast meat, but the constitutional and, in consequence, nation-state movement that only rarely, and then always tragically, enlivened the scene of German history.”
Ernst Cramer, publicist and confidant of Axel Springer, added in the light of the fall of the Wall: “We should never forget: Freedom is the principal matter; everything else is secondary.”
In October 2006, on the 40th anniversary of the publishing tower in Berlin, Cramer said, “For years, the ‘Verlagshaus an der Mauer’ was a ray of hope for all citizens of Eastern Europe yearning for freedom. But it was also a magnet for international tourists. Today, it lives up to its promise and proclaims freedom to the whole world.”
Standing up for freedom is also enormously important to Friede Springer, the publisher’s widow and now Deputy Chair of the Supervisory Board. She received the Freedom Award of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for her efforts in 2020 at a ceremony held in Frankfurt’s Paulskirche. The jury’s statement said: “Friede Springer is a laureate with a clear profile in a time of unclear circumstances. She is not only representative of Axel Springer’s commitment to freedom of the press but is herself a fighter for the free word in a free world. This commitment, this steadfastness and this courage are needed to continue to defend not only the freedom of the press, but the freedom of all people.”
The award winner issued a promise during her thank-you speech: “I always see freedom as our responsibility to report wisely, truly, fairly.” This coincides with the view of Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner. In his book “Die Freiheitsfalle” (The Freedom Trap), published in 2011, he examines threats to freedom in today’s world, which he sees in a growing complacency: “The freer Germans and Europeans have become, the less important freedom has become to them. This is psychologically comprehensible. What people don’t have, they want to gain. What people have, they take for granted.” In sociopolitical terms, this complacency is highly dangerous, “because what you don’t actively defend can easily be lost again. We believe we have freedom forever.” But that is not the case, he said.
With the introduction of a new corporate design in 2019, the company also thought about how, in the light of the fundamental transformation it was undergoing from a traditional newspaper publisher to a digital media and technology company, it could devise a motto that could promote cohesion between the company’s many different and autonomous divisions, but also describe the character of the company. It quickly became clear that the motto should have to do with freedom. The ultimate outcome was: “We empower free decisions.”
Chronic
The appeal of the “Kuratorium Unteilbares Deutschland” (Board of Trustees of Indivisible Germany) for the fundraising campaign “Macht das Tor auf!” (Open the gate!) says: “Berlin embodies freedom for the whole of Germany in East and West!” Regarding the GDR, the following demands are made: free travel in Germany, free choice of residence and workplace, free speech. The proceeds from the campaign are to be used to support refugee youth and emigrant children, as well as to promote events that deepen the idea of reunification and relations between East and West.
On August 17, 1962, 18-year-old escapee Peter Fechter dies in a horrific manner: GDR border police officers leave the young man, mortally wounded by a bullet, untreated for almost an hour. For Axel Springer, Fechter’s death is a symbol of the cruelty of the East German regime, but at the same time of the will for freedom in the GDR. An initially provisional memorial is erected near the site of Fechter’s death, which acquires an “official” character when German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer visits it shortly after the first anniversary of Fechter’s death in 1963. Before Axel Springer inaugurates the new publishing building on Kochstrasse on October 6, 1966, he lays a wreath at the Fechter memorial, for whose upkeep the publishing house assumes responsibility to this day. Fates like those of Peter Fechter should not be forgotten in day-to-day politics, Axel Springer continues to emphasize after August 17, 1962.
On August 1, 1963, quotation marks around the abbreviation GDR become compulsory for all the company’s publications, which is more than just a symbolic act. The East German satellite state “GDR” was – to paraphrase Willy Brandt – neither German nor democratic nor a republic. The publisher justifies the step by saying that the “GDR”, with its violation of human rights and the building of the Wall, proves that it does not deserve to be designated such attributes as ‘democratic’. Axel Springer uses private funds to help many GDR refugees gain a foothold in the West. For example, he helps one of the two families who fled to the West from Thuringia in 1979 with a homemade balloon. At his publishing house’s journalists’ club, he hands over a few thousand DM to a doctor who made it to the West tucked away in a hidden welded container in a car. The Axel Springer Foundation is also very active, as documents in the company archives show.
Between 1965 and 1975, the beneficiaries of donations from the publisher’s foundation included the Helfende Hände (Helping Hands) relief organization in Hamburg. As early as 1951, the shipowner’s wife Dora Fritzen began to help people in the GDR: politically persecuted people and their families, later those willing to leave the country as well as destitute pensioners. She donates packages, but also offers initial support after they have moved to the West. This help for GDR citizens living in bondage, which the State Security Service tries to boycott, is entirely in Axel Springer’s spirit: his publishing house donates around DM 20,000 a year for this purpose. In addition, he gives the Johnsallee villa in Hamburg, for a time the publishing house’s headquarters, to the relief organization free of charge as a guest house.
In 1967, in the face of political developments and the debate about the alleged power of the media, which culminate in attacks on the publishing house, Axel Springer formulates four principles, which he presents publicly during his speech at the Übersee-Club in Hamburg. They are: – the unconditional advocacy of the peaceful restoration of German unity in freedom – reconciliation between Jews and Germans; this also includes support for the vital rights of the Israeli people – the rejection of any kind of political totalitarianism – the affirmation of the free social market economy. In the speech, he also emphasizes that “within these four boundary stakes of a tolerant worldview (…) every editor-in-chief is free to shape their paper as they see fit in cooperation with their editors.” The publisher is convinced that media companies cannot exist without values.
In spring 1973, reporters from the French magazine L’Express asked Axel Springer about the current political situation, venturing a look into the future with him. One of the publisher’s answers concerned Berlin: “Berlin’s survival, its vigor, will be the measure of the value of all politics, whatever they may be. The value for the future of freedom. If it has a future.” His second glance goes beyond Berlin: “Then one day you will be able to see the whole of Germany again. United for the sake of freedom and embedded in a free Europe. I am convinced of that. I would like to witness this event; if not, my son will be there.” To the surprise of French journalists, Axel Springer does not insist on the “much longed-for reunification of Germany” at any price. Above all, he values freedom. “If the Germans on the other side of the Wall lived in freedom, I wouldn’t find anything wrong with showing my ID when crossing the border. As a result of the Second World War, for which we are responsible, two German states? Okay, but only if freedom and human rights are guaranteed in both.”
In October 1974, publishing house Ullstein Buchverlag presents the dissident magazine Kontinent at the Frankfurt Book Fair. It was founded on the initiative of the then publishing director Wolf Jobst Siedler and the Russian writer Wladimir Maximov, who had emigrated to Paris. The literary magazine, which has more than 200 pages and is published by a subsidiary of Axel Springer Verlag AG, is intended to be a platform for independent writers and publicists, protected from Soviet censorship, and to counter “aggressive totalitarianism with the creative power of the literature and spirit of Eastern Europe”. Axel Springer supports the cause; for him, dissidents are “companions in the struggle for freedom.” Why does he always come back to the subject of freedom, he is asked in an interview by Kontinent. His answer: unfreedom remains unfreedom, “no matter under which flag it sail or in which color it marches and terrorizes.” And, “I consider political freedom such a central concern of the 20th century world that I place it higher than borders and sovereignty.” The work of the editorial staff went beyond journalism. Kontinent employees send clothing, medicines, food to Eastern European countries. They also provide individuals willing to help with address lists and all the necessary information so that they in turn can start package drives.
In 1976, Axel Springer is awarded the Fugger Medal in Bavaria for – as it says – “outstanding merits and extraordinary achievements which promote the freedom, independence, and integrity of the newspaper press and raise awareness of this among the public”. A quote from Axel Springer’s acceptance speech, aimed at the GDR, reads: “Where equality is understood as sameness of opinion, where there is no room for dissent, that’s the end of freedom.”
In a prize competition on the 200th anniversary of the USA, the winner is 26-year-old doctor Patricia Aden from Pinneberg, who, in the opinion of the jury, described the subject of freedom most vividly. Her text is a single plea to protect Berlin: “Berlin is the divided capital of a divided country in a miserably divided world. As long as Germans want a free fatherland, Berlin is the key word.” Her appeal ends with: “America has received greatness to preserve the most intrinsic thing in its history and for humanity – freedom. Protect its present symbol: Berlin.” Ten days before Carter’s inauguration in January 1977, Axel Springer had the winning text and a photo of the publishing house at the Wall printed as a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and in the Atlanta Constitution – with a total circulation of around four million copies. Headline: “Are you a Berliner, Mr. President?”.
When Springer is awarded the American Friendship Medal in August 1978 and receives it in his Berlin publishing house, he stands in his office next to several pictures showing scenes from the evacuation of the Warsaw Ghetto, the removal of the fatally injured Peter Fechter and a portrait of the East Berliner Nico Hübner, whose fate has been making headlines for weeks. He is not only a victim, but a conscientious objector. When he was drafted for military service in early 1978, Hübner referred to Berlin’s demilitarized status, which also applied to the eastern part. The SED regime disliked a GDR citizen insisting on his rights – but Axel Springer was impressed. On March 26, 1978, he writes that Hübner recalls what is at stake first and last: “Freedom and human rights, self-determination, seeing a common German fatherland. Existence in the conflict between democracy and dictatorship.”
Before Helmut Schmidt’s meeting with SED leader Erich Honecker in the GDR in 1981, Axel Springer admonishes the chancellor, telling him he should never forget during these talks the tragic and brutal attacks on every movement of freedom in the GDR.
In the summer of 1989, as the flow of refugees from the GDR via Hungary and other Eastern European countries surges into the Federal Republic, employees of the publishing house provide altruistic help. They host refugees in their homes, accompany them to public offices, and introduce them to other German citizens in the hope that they will be able to help. And they encourage the refugees. Almost every day, BILD prints job ads from the employment office specifically for eastern refugees. A BILD secretary who hosts a couple from East Berlin in her home describes her conversations with the master painter and his wife about their life in the GDR – materially well off, but in constant fear of being spied on and frustrated by the lack of freedom to travel. Afterward, she says, she saw her own life with different eyes: “I suddenly started thinking about democracy, about freedom…”
On the 1999 anniversary of the building of the Wall, a new Fechter memorial is completed, a 2.60-meter-high rust-red column made of steel, which captivates onlookers with the engraved sentence: “… all he wanted was freedom.” A round stone slab in the pavement marks the spot where he died. Axel Springer covers the costs. At the site, the Governing Mayor, representatives of the parties in the House of Representatives and the Allies, as well as Friede Springer and employees of the publishing house, meet annually on August 13 for a memorial service. The memorial was designed by the sculptor Karl Biedermann.
In memory of Axel Springer and his hope that Germany would one day be reunified, sculptor Stephan Balkenhol designs the larger-than-life figure of a man balancing on his left leg on a concrete wall. Behind the figure, Balkenhol places eleven original pieces of the Berlin Wall. The site at the corner of Axel-Springer-Strasse and Zimmerstrasse was once borderland, no man’s land, a death strip between East and West. The sculpture is inaugurated on May 25, 2009, on the 50th anniversary of the laying of the cornerstone of the Axel Springer Building. The figure balancing on the wall stands for the power of freedom. The man on the wall has his wits about him, but he is calm. He is about to take the next move forward. But the figure is also a reminder that even in democracy it is important to pay attention to the right balance and to realize that even in free societies that balance can be lost. Speaking about his sculpture Balancing Act, sculptor Stephan Balkenhol says: “Above all, balancing is a metaphor for freedom. But freedom is not a static state; it must be constantly redefined, asserted, and sometimes fought for.”
On October 6, 2016, construction work officially begins on the new Axel Springer building. The extraordinary architecture stands for the future of work, but it is also a symbol for the digital transformation of Axel Springer. And not only that: the new building by architect Rem Koolhaas is located at the heart of the former newspaper district and on the former line of the inner-German border, which runs right through the building. Axel Springer commemorates both historical eras. Since its opening on October 6, 2020, Stolpersteine have been laid around the building to commemorate the former Jewish businessmen and residents of the new-build area. Inside the building, architectural elements pick up on the former path of the death strip erected by the SED regime of the GDR to prevent people from reaching freedom.
In February 2018, 27-year-old investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée of the same age, Martina Kusnirova, are shot dead in their home in the village of Velka Maca. Kuciak, who works for Ringier Axel Springer Slovakia, had been reporting on shady dealings by entrepreneur Marian Kocner, as well as on other entanglements between politics and profiteering. A report published only after his death triggered mass demonstrations against corruption in Slovakia and led to the resignation of the then ruling government. Investigations of leading officials of the police and judiciary suspected of corruption are also initiated. After the change of government in 2020, these investigations are expanded by the new government under the slogan “purge” and are also directed against formerly high state officials.
With the introduction of a new corporate design in 2019, the company also thought about how, given its fundamental transition from a newspaper publisher to a digital media and technology company, a motto could be devised that promotes cohesion and describe the character of the company. The outcome is: “We empower free decisions”.
The Friedrich Naumann Foundation awards the Freedom Prize to Friede Springer in 2020. Chairman of the Board Karl-Heinz Paqué justifies the jury’s decision with her commitment to the free word in a free world: “This commitment, this steadfastness and this courage must continue to defend not only the freedom of the press, but the freedom of all people.”
Immediately after the start of the war in February 2022, Axel Springer shows its solidarity with Ukraine, which has been invaded by Russia, and raises a Ukrainian national flag in front of its main building. Axel Springer’s journalistic brands (including BILD, WELT, POLITICO, ONET, INSIDER) also support their Ukrainian colleagues on the ground. To this end, the company provides 500,000 euros to benefit the work of media based in Ukraine and their research. To support the Ukrainian people, a BILD aid truck transports several tons of goods donated by BILD readers and companies in March. The 40-ton truck and a Flixbus are packed with food, dog and cat food, diapers, toothpaste and much more. Initial loading tally: nearly 400 full removal boxes plus 3,000 power banks for charging cell phones. The donations in kind is first taken with the BILD crew to a safe and trustworthy warehouse on the Ukraine border. Another truck then takes the goods directly to victims in Lviv. CEO Mathias Döpfner: “The first sacrifice of war is the truth. To counteract this, independent, free reporting on the ground is vital.” Axel Springer will intensively accompany and document the selection of specific projects that will benefit from the money. In addition, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is honored with the Axel Springer Award 2022 for his tireless and selfless efforts to save his country. The company presents this annual award to personalities who shape culture, face up to their social responsibility or change markets in an outstanding and innovative way. The reason for choosing Zelenskyy: “In 2022, there can be no more worthy laureate than the president of that country which – in the literal sense – fights on the front line for everything that constitutes our idea of a free society.”