The post-war press in West Germany has been greatly developed by a publisher named Axel Casar Springer. His share of the West German daily newspaper market now stands at around 27 per cent (the figures for Hamburg and West Berlin are still between 60 and 70 per cent), his nearest rivals in this field control a mere 3 per cent.

His lurid and sensationalist Bild-zeitung-the Federal Republic’s only really ‘national’ daily-has a circulation of three and three quarter million-the biggest on the Continent outside the Soviet Union-and is read by nearly a third of the country’s adult population, whilst his many magazines include Hor zu. which, with a circulation of 3.8 million, is the Continent’s widest selling weekly. Springer’s mono­poly of national Sunday papers is total; only two exist in West Germany, Bild am Sonntag and Welt am Sonntag. and both belong to him, as does one of the country’s four widely distributed ‘quality’ dailies, Die Welt and its biggest evening paper, the Hamburger Abendblatt.

In addition to its newspapers and magazines the Springer organisation, two-thirds of whose shares are owned by Axel Springer himself, also owns the Ulstein and propylaen publishing houses, and has part control of a number of large German travel agencies. With an annual turnover larger even than that of the huge pre-War Nazi Eber Verlag the Springer organisation has created in West Germany a concentration of newspaper ownership unequalled anywhere else in the world.

The development of the Springer press epitomizes the unabated tendencies towards concentration that have been the most important feature of the recent history of the West German press.

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Throughout 1960s the number of’Ein-Zeitungs-Kreize’ (areas served by only one newspaper) steadily grew, whilst the number of small papers with a circulation below 20,000, which represented some 30 per cent of the total circulation in 1958, made up less than 15 percent only a decade later.

The economics of newspaper publishing in a system, where advertising revenue is the paramount consideration, have favoured large companies and large newspapers; thus today one half of the tots 1 daily circulation in the Federal Republic is in the hands of a mere 3 percent of publishers, and whilst the smaller papers are taken over or forced to close; those with the largest circulations prosper” and grow. The foreseeable future holds little likelihood of real improvements in the situation, especially with the emergence of a new organisational phenomenon with far-reaching implications for the press in the shape of the giant multi-media concern.

The Bertels­mann complex is Germany’s largest organisation in this new field, already holding interests in books, magazines, printing, film produc­tion and distribution, cinemas, records, and overseas commercial radio stations.