Axel Springer’s Trump years

The WELT-Wirtschaftsgipfel is a major moment in the German business calendar — and in particular for its host, the media giant Axel Springer. The gathering of political and economic power-players is held atop the company’s 19-story tower along the old Berlin Wall, which its founder built as a middle finger to the Communists to the east.

CEO Mathias Döpfner, who also controls nearly half of the multibillion-dollar company personally, hosts meetings in the summit’s inner sanctum, a floor below the main event space. There, in January 2019, he convened two of the leading figures of the new populist right: The nationalist Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who had recently retaken his office, and Donald Trump’s ambassador to Germany, Ric Grenell.

Döpfner intended the meeting, two people familiar with it said, as an opportunity to introduce Kurz, a Springer-friendly politician, to a key figure in global finance, Henry Kravis, whose firm KKR would soon invest $3.2 billion in Axel Springer. Grenell, a familiar face in the building and possible future secretary of State, wasn’t an unusual addition, and the conversation was more social than practical. (Kravis, also a Semafor investor, no longer directs KKR’s day-to-day investments.)

But the meeting could only have taken place at Axel Springer, and it showcased how unusual the company had become: a global media giant on the make that was navigating the rise of the new global right to mutual benefit, even as its rivals have come under attack.

Certainly, there was no hostility at the 2019 conference. Upstairs, one Axel Springer executive raised the unlikely fantasy that Kurz, a smooth and handsome figure who had helped bring right-wing populism mainstream, could be chancellor of Germany. (An Axel Springer spokesman said it was a joke.) A star reporter at the Springer tabloid Bild, Paul Ronzheimer, had also written a sympathetic biography of Kurz.

Springer and Döpfner, a towering 61-year old, had built solid connections to a movement that often sought to wage war on establishment media. It’s a relationship that was little-noticed in the United States. But in 2024, it has new relevance, both as Springer deepens its American ambitions and as American media — gathering in Washington this week for the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner — eyes Trump’s possible return.

Grenell was a Springer favorite, too. A legendary diplomatic bomb-thrower, he had alienated his German hosts on arrival by telling Breitbart he wanted to “empower other conservatives throughout Europe.” When then-Chancellor Angela Merkel iced him out, he directed much of his energies towards the Balkans, and his relationship with mainstream German media — defined by legendarily anti-Trump magazine Der Spiegel — was one of mutual suspicion. But he built a warm relationship with Döpfner and a uniquely strong bond with Springer’s powerful national tabloid, Bild.

Grenell socialized with its high-profile editor at the time, Julian Reichelt, and was a noticeably regular voice in its pages even as he kept his distance from other German outlets. Bild went out of its way to offer him a platform, at one point even publishing an op-ed by the ambassador in English, an unusual move for a German tabloid. It also published his attack on Der Spiegel as anti-American, after a scandal at the prestige German magazine. And Grenell felt betrayed, a person who spoke to him at the time said, when the editor of Bild’s sister broadsheet Welt am Sonntag published a scoop about Trump’s attempt to buy exclusive access to a German COVID-19 vaccine.

“It was more a relationship with Reichelt than it was with Mathias,” recalled John Emerson, who was ambassador to Germany under President Barack Obama.

Döpfner, he noted, was “deeply committed to the transatlantic relationship” and had warm relationships with every U.S. ambassador: “He was one of the first guys you want to sit down and meet.”

The meeting was an example of the unusual courtship between Döpfner and Grenell, and between Axel Springer and the Trump administration. It’s a story that offers an unusual glimpse of a virtuosically political publisher navigating the new political landscape, as publishers all over the world reckon with the staying power of the populist right.

Axel Springer is a difficult company for Americans to understand. It occupies a similar place in German media culture to Fox News’s in the Anglosphere. Its populist tabloid Bild positions itself as the voice of older working people, and it is despised by center-left establishment media. But its history is different, and defined by a fierce anti-Communism that endures in the requirement that employees sign a pledge to support NATO and Israel. But while Fox News has bent toward the MAGA movement, Axel Springer has sought to hold to the center-right — and, in particular, it remains openly hostile to Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party.

Döpfner, like his company, is a singular figure. An art collector and former music critic, he has, for better and for worse, what a colleague of his once described to me as “mogul energy.” I encountered this most clearly when I wrote in The New York Times about alleged sexual harassment at Axel Springer. He and his team fought to keep the story secret and (I thought) gave me misleading answers. But once it was published, Döpfner quickly fired his protege, the charismatic Bild editor Reichelt. And the next week, Döpfner popped up in New York, took me out to a friendly lunch and made no real mention of the saga. We vaguely discussed working together sometime. I was charmed.

He is also deeply drawn to politics, plays hard, and occasionally gets into trouble. The Washington Post printed other emails in which he suggested praying for Trump’s reelection — drawing him praise from Trump himself, though Döpfner said he was being sarcastic. While Reichelt was under fire for alleged sexual harassment, Döpfner told a friend he wanted to support the editor, who Döpfner felt was fighting a politically-correct “authoritarian state.” (He has said the messages were private and taken out of context.)

“All media executives, including Mathias, take meetings and have professional relationships with business leaders, political figures and government officials who hold a wide array of political views — it’s part of the job. The implication that any of those interactions would influence the reporting our journalists do is untrue,” an Axel Springer spokesman, Nick Pacilio, said in an email. “Anyone who claims that their relationship to Mathias would influence press coverage deeply misunderstands that relationship. We expect fair, nonpartisan, critical, editorially independent journalism from the news organizations we have invested in, and we welcome that same caliber of coverage of ourselves.”

Emerson, the former ambassador, said he thought Döpfner’s personal politics were closer to those of Germany’s classically liberal Free Democrats — suspicious of big government and anything that smacked of the Communist past, but equally hostile to the power-hungry new right. His recent book, The Trade Trap, offers criticism of Donald Trump’s style and his conduct. “Hardly anyone has weakened democracy from within as much as Trump,” he writes, in a chapter devoted jointly to the U.S. president and Döpfner’s domestic nemesis, Merkel: “It would be uninteresting, predictable, and unjust to write about his failings without even briefly illuminating the other side of the coin.”

Döpfner writes that he believes Merkel “weakened Germany, Europe, and the transatlantic alliance while strengthening an authoritarian Russia.” He concludes cryptically, “Was that naïveté, opportunism, or strategy? Since Angela Merkel certainly isn’t naïve, let’s hope it has been opportunism.”

Inside Axel Springer, Döpfner was blunter: He voiced suspicions to colleagues that Merkel — who was raised in East Germany — had been compromised by Russia, a favorite theory of the German right. He had two reporters, Michael Behrendt and Dirk Banse, at work investigating that rumor, and kept tabs on their work, a Springer journalist said. (“This is complete nonsense. Mathias never assigned anyone to investigate Merkel,” an Axel Springer spokesman said.)

Springer’s relationship with Trump and Döpfner’s political plans are subjects of endless conspiratorial rumors in German mainstream media. Some assume his American ambitions, such as the company’s purchase of Politico, are part of a right-wing political agenda. If so, there’s been no sign of it in Politico’s newsroom, where Döpfner’s focus has been building up the company’s establishment bona-fides and relationships with the Biden administration. Sunday, he’ll host one of the most sought-after parties of the weekend, at the sprawling Georgetown manse of Politico founder Robert Allbritton, who remains involved in the company.

But the Trump years offer a glimpse at the opportunities a publisher can find in doing business with political forces who, while disdained by the existing press — in part because they loathe traditional European and American journalism — can at times be grateful to find friends.

The company’s ambitions do lie clearly in the United States, where it recently opened a new headquarters. People familiar with its corporate strategy say it plans to continue controlling costs at its German news outlets, and to spin off its jobs portal Stepstone and its European real estate marketplace Aviv — moves that could give KKR a healthy return on its investment and Döpfner an opportunity to focus more intensely on the U.S. market.

Company insiders say that a top acquisition target is The Wall Street Journal.

Döpfner has also inserted himself into a new type of conflict within his U.S. publications. He pushed to fire top Business Insider editor Nic Carlson, after the high-profile investor Bill Ackman objected to its coverage of his wife, people familiar with internal conversations said. Ackman’s intense attacks on Axel Springer pushed the company to defend its reporting, and in recent weeks, according to three people familiar with the situation, Business Insider has exchanged several private legal letters with Ackman, who is being represented by the defamation firm Clare Locke. Though Springer has balked at Ackman’s demands, it has privately weighed whether agreeing to some of the billionaire’s suggested changes could avoid an expensive legal battle. (Axel Springer declined to comment on the Ackman case.)

The company is well-positioned for four more Trump years. A top Trump aide said Grenell is seen internally as a possible candidate for secretary of State, if Republicans win the Senate as well as the White House and have the muscle to confirm such a divisive figure. And Döpfner remains close to the small world of new-right leaders. His son reportedly worked as chief of staff to the PayPal founder Peter Thiel, a libertarian figure who endorsed Trump and employed Kurz, the former Austrian chancellor, as a “global strategist.”

Grenell has spoken to Washington acquaintances about his friendship with Döpfner. (Grenell used to be friendly with a range of journalists, including this one, but when I texted him to ask about this story, he asked, “At what point do you feel enough shame to stop making up stories to help Democrats?” Reichelt also didn’t respond to inquiries.)

Axel Springer is a rising power in U.S. media, and if it makes another major acquisition, it may become a central one. Döpfner’s choices about his company’s relationship to power — both corporate and political — will play a role in the direction of American media over the next decade. Axel Springer’s history in the Trump years in Berlin is understandably obscure to the American journalists who read its publications and eat its canapés, but it will inform the company’s next moves.

— Max Tani contributed reporting.

• “We want to prove that being nonpartisan is actually the more successful positioning,” Döpfner told the Washington Post.
• “You could imagine him as a German aristocrat from the mid-19th century who might have had the occasional duel, with a scar running down his right cheek,” former FT editor Lionel Barber said of Döpfner.
• Who was Axel Springer? An anti-communist publisher with a personal life that, as I wrote in the Times, “might be called colorful.” In particular: “His third wife had previously been married to his next-door neighbor. His fourth wife was the next-door neighbor’s second wife. His fifth wife, Friede Springer, had been the family’s nanny. When he left the company to her upon his death, she surprised her many doubters by emerging as a force in her own right. She is now the vice chairwoman of Axel Springer’s supervisory board.”