‘Abrokyire Abrabo’: My wahala in Germany

I experienced triple wahala in the last issue – a classical music concert, a conversation in Deutsch and a sandwich with a funny taste for which I had no choice but to consume. But the end of our stay was near.

Our last day in Germany came very quickly, as we had slept very late the previous night after leaving some dance steps in the capital city of Berlin.

Thankfully though, due to the magnanimity of our lecturers we were asked to report for class an hour later than we had done over the past few days because of our late night out. In effect we were asked to report at 10 a.m., instead of the normal 9 a.m. that we had been used to.

The main programmes of the day were a visit to Berlin’s largest newspaper house the Die Welt, presentation or awarding of certificates to course participants and a visit to the German parliament. We were, however, only able to do the first two programmes and left out our visit to the Bundestag because of time constraints.

 

 

Visit to Die Welt

Surprisingly we arrived the next day at IIJ refreshed before the scheduled time and proceeded to Axel Springer’s Die Welt imposing media establishment after 10 a.m. to a very huge surprise. Before we delve into that huge surprise that awaited us at Die Welt, let us go into some history of the newspaper.
Die Welt, which in English means The World, 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.

It originally carried news and British-view point editorial content, but from 1947 it adopted a policy of providing two leading articles on major questions, one British and one German.

At its peak in the occupation period, it had a circulation of around a million.

The modern paper takes a self –described “liberal cosmopolitan” position in editing, but Die Welt is generally considered to be a conservative newspaper.
The average circulation of Die Welt during our visit was about 209,000 and the paper could be obtained in more than 130 countries.

 

Bavarian edition

Daily regional editions appeared in Berlin and Hamburg, and in 2002 the paper experimented with a Bavarian edition.

A daily regional supplement also appeared in Bremen. The main editorial office was in Berlin, in conjunction with the Berliner Morgenpost.

Die welt is the flagship newspaper of the Axel Springer publishing group. Its leading competitors were the Frankfurt Allegemeine Zeitung, the Suddeutsche Zeitung and the Frankfurter Rundschau.

Financially though, it had been a loss maker for many years.

 

The newspaper at the time of visit published a compact edition – Dailies Alliance (EDA), and had a longstanding cooperation with comparable daily newspapers from other countries, including the Daily Telegraph (UK), Le Figaro (France) and ABC (Spain).

The newspaper published a compact edition entitled Welt Kompakt, a 32-page cut-down version of the main broadsheet. Welt Kompakt had a fresher look and was targeted to a young public.

The paper did not appear on Sundays, but the linked publication Welt am Sonntag took its place.

 

Axel Springer

On the other hand, Axel Springer AG was one of the largest newspaper publishing companies in Europe, having over 150 newspapers and magazines in over 30 countries, including several Central and Eastern European countries: Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Russia and Western European countries: Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, and had more than 10,000 employees with annual revenues and income on the scale of € 1 billion.

It was started in 1946/1947 by journalist Axel Springer.

 

The CEO when we visited was Mathias Dopfner. The Axel Springer Company was the largest publishing house in Europe and controlled the largest share of the German market for daily newspapers – 23.6 per cent.

Newspapers, magazines and products of the company included Die Welt, the intellectual flagship of the company; Bild, a newspaper with the largest circulation in Europe; while Computer Bild, published in nine countries, was Europe’s best –selling computer magazine.

The rest were Sports Bild, published in many countries, and which was Europe’s biggest sport magazine, Auto.cz, the biggest Czech Internet car portal including RoadLook.tv, starting in Slovakia and Poland as well, Farkt, the biggest daily tabloid in Poland, Hamburger Abendbaltt, Horzu and Dziennik, the intellectual flagship of the company in Poland.

 

For its corporate principles, the company had five socio-political preambles that were written by Axel Springer in 1967, amended in 1990 following German reunification and supplemented in 2001, which formed part of the articles of association of Axel Springer AG.

They painted a liberal picture of the world to uphold liberty and law in Germany, a country belonging to the Western family of nations, and to further the unification of Europe, to promote reconciliation of Jews and Germans and support the vital rights of the State of Israel.