Die Zeit
Die Zeit is a national weekly newspaper and is considered an important voice in the German media landscape. The first edition was published in Hamburg in 1946, thanks to a press license from the British military government. Today, the weekly newspaper has a circulation of over 600,000 copies and has seen a positive development in print circulation in recent years. It is published by Zeitverlag, which in addition to the newspaper also operates an online service, e-commerce, further education programs, travel and much more.
Audience Share
1.6%
Ownership Type
private
Geographic Coverage
national
Content Type
paid content
Media Companies / Groups
Zeit Verlagsgruppe
Ownership Structure
Die Zeit is published by Zeitverlag Gerd Bucerius GmbH & Co. KG. The publishing house is owned by DvH Medien GmbH (50 %) and Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH (50 %). Both owners ultimately belong to different parts of the Holtzbrinck family. DvH GmbH belongs to Dieter Holtzbrinck and Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH to his half-brother Stefan von Holtzbrinck.
Voting Rights
DvH Medien GmbH is responsible for the operational management of Zeitverlag. Its Supervisory Board consists of five members, one of whom is the Chairman or Deputy Chairman of the shareholders of Dieter von Holtzbrinck Stiftung GmbH. Decisions, such as the appointment of a managing director or the adoption of the annual financial statements, must be approved by a majority of the Supervisory Board.
Individual Owner
Group / Individual Owner
Christiane Schoeller
Christiane Schoeller inherited the shares (25%) in Zeitverlag from her mother Monika Schoeller in 2019. Christiane Schoeller is a member of the Supervisory Board of the Holtzbrinck Group and does not otherwise appear in public.
Michael Grabner
Michael Grabner, the Austrian media manager, has been working for the Holtzbrinck Group in various functions since the early 1990s. As managing director and later as operating partner. When the shares were split, he moved to DvH Medien and is currently Chairman of the Supervisory Board. Grabner is also on the advisory board of Mediengruppe Pressedruck (Augsburger Allgemeine) and a shareholder in the postal company PIN AG.
General Information
Founding Year
1946
Affiliated Interests Founder
was an important German publisher, lawyer and politician. He was born on May 19, 1906 in Hamm, Westphalia, and died on September 29, 1995 in Hamburg. Bucerius was considered an opponent of the Nazi regime and became a member of the Bundestag for the CDU after the war. He founded Die Zeit at almost the same time. In 1951, he acquired a majority stake in the magazine Stern and founded the publishing house Gruner + Jahr a few years later. In 1973, he sold his shares to the Bertelsmann Group, of which he was a member of the Supervisory Board until 1991.
art historian, journalist and writer. Lorenz was born in Hamburg in 1898 and died in 1976. Lorenz, along with the other three founders, was granted a license by the British, which led to the founding of Die Zeit. Relatively little is known about Lorenz; he left the circle of partners at an early age.
was Hamburg's city planning officer until the National Socialists dismissed him from his post in 1933 because of his modern views on art. Shortly after co-founding the newspaper, Tüngel became the second editor-in-chief of Die Zeit. A conflict arose in the editorial office in 1955. The background to this was the increasingly right-wing positioning of the weekly newspaper headed by Tüngel. The dispute escalated when an article by Carl Schmitt, a former Nazi lawyer, was published, whereupon the respected author Marion Gräfin Dönhoff left the editorial team in protest after ten years. Tüngel was later dismissed by Bucerius and had his shares paid out in 1956.
worked as a publishing salesman in the 1930s, but was banned from his profession after a few years because he was married to a Jewish woman. After the end of the war, he headed the Armistice Commission near Hamburg and was granted a license by the British for his services.
Affiliated Interests Ceo
Chairman of the Management Board since 2023, has been with Die Zeit since 1999. Esser is a lawyer and has already held various roles as Managing Director (Spotlight Verlag, Main-Post media group) in his career. He was also editor-in-chief of the legal journals Business Law Europe, Tax Letter Europe and European Business and Tax Law at the Bertelsmann International publishing group.
Affiliated Interests Editor-In-Chief
Editor-in-chief of Die Zeit since 2004, previously editor-in-chief of the Tagesspiegel, where he remains an editor today. Di Lorenzo also hosts the talk show "3nach9" on Radio Bremen and is a member of the board of trustees of the Zeit Stiftung Bucerius.
Affiliated Interests other important people
Chief Financial Officer since 2023, was previously Global CFO of RTL AdAlliance / RTL Group. Prior to that, she was CFO of Bavaria Film GmbH and CEO / CFO of 1-2-3.tv GmbH for several years.
Chief Commercial Officer, has been with the publishing house since 2004 and was previously Managing Director of Zeit Akademie GmbH, which sells learning and training programs. Von der Kall is committed to the exchange with foreign media companies, especially from Turkey. He held a fellowship in the "Future Forum Turkey Europe" at the Mercator Foundation and is a member of the marketing working group at the Media Association of the Free Press (MVFP).
Chief Digital Officer, has been with Die Zeit since 2009 and was previously Managing Director of Zeit Online. At the beginning of his career, Röpke held a management position at the Financial Times Deutschland for several years. Röpke is also on the advisory board of the incubator nextMedia.Hamburg.
Contact
Helmut-Schmidt-Haus
Buceriusstraße, Eingang Speersort 1
20095 Hamburg
Tel: (040) 32 80 - 0
E-Mail: DieZeit@zeit.de
Website: www.zeit.de
Financial Information
Revenue (in Mill. $)
€ 291 Mio. (2022) / USD 306 Mio.
Operating Profit (in Mill. $)
Missing Data
Advertising (in % of total funding)
21% : € 61 Mio. / USD 64 Mio. (2022)
Market Share
Missing Data
Further Information
Headlines
Meta Data
The average exchange rate from the year of publication of the source was used for the conversion from euros to US dollars (2022: USD 1.05).
