Spiegel Gruppe
The Spiegel Group is a Hamburg-based media group consisting of SPIEGEL-Verlag Rudolf Augstein GmbH & Co. KG and its shareholder and parent company Rudolf Augstein GmbH. In addition to the weekly magazine Der Spiegel and the online portal of the same name Spiegel.de, the Spiegel Group also publishes Manager Magazin, Spiegel TV, Harvard Business Manager and 11 Freunde.
The first issue of Der Spiegel is published in Hanover on 4 January 1947. Over the course of seven decades, Spiegel-Verlag has developed into a multimedia media company whose journalistic offering stands for quality journalism. Today, the Spiegel Group is one of the most renowned media companies in Germany. Its print magazines, TV productions and online offerings are of outstanding importance in the German press landscape. The core of all of the Group's journalistic products is journalistic quality and independent reporting, which contributes significantly to its prominent position in the German media sector.
The Spiegel Group is majority-owned by Mitarbeiter KG, a holding company of Spiegel employees, the Augstein heirs and RM Hamburg Holding GmbH, which is part of the international media group Bertelsmann.
Rudolf Augstein, the founder of SPIEGEL who died in 2002, sold 25 per cent of the shares in 1971 to Gruner + Jahr, which is now part of Bertelsmann. He also transferred half of his company to the employees in 1974. In his will, he also stipulated that his heirs must each sell 0.5 per cent of the shares to the two remaining shareholders and thus lose their blocking minority.
Since then, the majority owner of the Spiegel Group has been KG Beteiligungsgesellschaft für SPIEGEL-Mitarbeiter mbH & Co. This is made up of long-standing Spiegel employees. Together with the other shareholders, they exercise ownership rights and participate in important decisions through their elected representatives - from investments to appointments to management positions. They also receive 50.5 per cent of the profits.
This ownership structure is unique in the European media landscape. Since then, shared responsibility, shared decision-making and a claim to half of the profits have been key elements of working conditions at the Spiegel Group and characterise the corporate culture. This consistent implementation, which turns employees into co-owners, cannot be found anywhere else.
Mother Company
Rudolf Augstein GmbH
Business Form
private
Legal Form
Limited partnership with a GmbH as the personally liable general partner (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung & Co. Kommanditgesellschaft, in short: GmbH & Co. KG)
Business Sectors
Film: Production of TV feature films
Other Print Outlets
SPIEGEL Coaching; SPIEGEL Edition; SPIEGEL Geld; SPIEGEL Start;
SPIEGEL Wissen; Dein SPIEGEL; 11 Freunde (51.0%)
Other TV Outlets
Curiosity Channel powered by SPIEGEL; SPIEGEL Geschichte
Other Online Outlets
www.tv.spiegel.de; www.manager-magazin.de; www.11freunde.de; www.curiositychannel.tv; www.spiegel-geschichte.tv
Media Business
Publishing houses
manager magazin Verlagsgesellschaft mbH (75.1%)
DER SPIEGEL GmbH & Co. KG (100%)
manager magazin new media GmbH & Co. KG (75.1%)
Media companies & agencies
manager-lounge leaders network GmbH (75.1%)
SPIEGEL TV GmbH (100%)
SPIEGEL TV Infotainment GmbH (100%)
SPIEGEL TV Produktion GmbH (100%)
Ericus Media GmbH (100%)
ASPEKT Telefilm-Produktion GmbH (100%)
Quality Channel GmbH (100%)
SPIEGEL Tech Lab GmbH (100%)
SPIEGEL TV Geschichte und Wissen GmbH & Co. KG (51%)
Services, sales & logistics
SPIEGELnet GmbH (100%)
QS Quality Service GmbH (100%)
Other
Ericus Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG (100%)
SPIEGEL Beteiligungsmanagement GmbH (100%)
Media
11 Freunde Verlag GmbH & Co KG (51%)
dpa Deutsche Presse Agentur GmbH (0.7%)
TV production
dctp Entwicklungsgesellschaft für TV-Programm mbH (25%)
General Information
Founding Year
1947
Affiliated Interests Founder
was born in Hanover on 5 November 1923. After graduating from high school in 1941, he worked as a trainee at the Hannoverscher Anzeiger. Following his traineeship, Augstein was drafted into the labour service and did military service from April 1942. In 1945, the wounded Augstein was briefly taken prisoner by the Americans. In 1945, Augstein began working as a journalist for the Hannoversches Nachrichtenblatt, which was licensed by the British military government. From 1946, he took over the Germany section of the news magazine Diese Woche. At the age of 23, Augstein became its publisher and editor-in-chief and renamed the magazine DER SPIEGEL with issue 1/1947.
From 1950 to 1962, he was publisher of Der Spiegel together with John Jahr, and in 1962 the publisher and printing company owner Richard Gruner took over Jahr's position. Augstein and Gruner parted company in 1969, with Augstein remaining the sole owner of Der Spiegel until Gruner + Jahr took a 25 per cent stake in 1971. In 1974, Rudolf Augstein donated 50 per cent of his company to the employees.
On 26 October 1962, the so-called Spiegel affair began with a search of the Spiegel editorial offices, which ultimately led to the fall of the then Federal Minister of Defence, Franz Josef Strauß. The reason was the Spiegel title ‘Conditionally ready for defence’ about the NATO manoeuvre ‘Fallex 62’, in which Strauß suspected treasonous elements. The then editor-in-chief Claus Jacobi, publishing director Hans Detlev Becker and article author Conrad Ahlers were arrested; Augstein handed himself in to the police on 27 October and spent 103 days in custody. On 14 May 1965, the criminal proceedings against Augstein and Ahlers were dropped due to a lack of evidence.
In 1972, Augstein accepted an offer from the then FDP chairman Walter Scheel and stood as a candidate against Rainer Barzel in the Paderborn constituency in the Bundestag elections. He entered the German Bundestag via the NRW state list in November 1972, from which he resigned at his own request after three months.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Augstein published commentaries on politics in Adenauer's Germany under the pseudonym Jens Daniel; until his death in November 2002, he contributed to exposing undesirable developments in democracy and society with critical commentaries and essays. He was particularly interested in historical contexts.
Employees
more than 1,300
Contact
SPIEGEL-Verlag Rudolf Augstein GmbH & Co. KG
Ericusspitze 1
20457 Hamburg, Deutschland
Tel. +49 (0)40 3007-0
Fax. +49 (0)40 3007-2247
E-Mail: spiegel@spiegel.de
Webseite: www.gruppe.spiegel.de
Tax/ ID Number
DE118922410
Financial Information
Revenue (Financial Data/ Optional)
€ 267,0 Mio. (2022)/ USD 281.2 Mio.
Operating Profit (in Mill. $)
€ 49,9 Mio. (2022) / USD 52.54 Mio.
Advertising (in % of total funding)
€ 31,0 Mio. (2021)/ USD 32.6 Mio.
Management
Executive Board
(*1965) has been Chairman of the Management Board of Spiegel-Verlag since June 2020. He is also Managing Director of the companies DER SPIEGEL GmbH & Co. KG, SPIEGELnet GmbH, SPIEGEL Beteiligungsmanagement GmbH, Quality Channel GmbH, Ericus Beteiligungsmanagement GmbH, manager magazin Verlagsgesellschaft mbH and manager magazin new media GmbH & Co. KG. Hass trained as an office and haulage clerk. He has worked at Spiegel-Verlag since 1992, initially as Head of Sales Service in the Sales Marketing department from 1996. In 2001 he became Deputy Head of Sales Marketing, and in 2005 he took over as Head of Sales. In 2015, he became Managing Director of Spiegel-Verlag.
(*1976) has been Managing Director of Spiegel-Verlag since June 2020. He is also Managing Director of the companies DER SPIEGEL GmbH & Co. KG, SPIEGEL Tech Lab GmbH, Ericus Beteiligungsmanagement GmbH and 11FREUNDE Verlag GmbH & Co. KG. Ottlitz began his journalistic career in 1995 as a local reporter for the Süddeutsche Zeitung. From 1997 to 2001, he attended the German School of Journalism in Munich. He then worked as a political editor at the Abendzeitung, from 2004 to 2006 as part of the CvD team at the Financial Times Deutschland and then as chief editor, head of copy and managing editor at Spiegel Online. Ottlitz has been editor-in-chief of SZ.de since 2011 and a member of the editorial board of Süddeutsche Zeitung since 2014. In January 2018, he returned to Spiegel-Verlag as Head of Product Development.
(*1971) has been Head of Organisational Development and Human Resources at the Spiegel Group since 2015. He is also responsible for Facility Management and is Managing Director of SPIEGELnet GmbH. Blum studied law and joined Mobilcom AG as a legal advisor after completing his doctorate. In 2003, he moved to the legal department of Gruner + Jahr and became deputy head of the HR department in 2005. He has been Head of Human Resources Germany there since 2006.
(*1965) has been Head of Corporate Communications at the Spiegel Group since 2010. Anja zum Hingst began her career in 1991 as Press Officer and Head of Corporate Communications at the publishing house Bibliographisches Institut & F.A. Brockhaus AG. Since 2000 she has been head of corporate communications at SPIEGELnet AG. In 2002, she moved to Frankfurt am Main as Head of Communications, PR and Marketing at the German Publishers and Booksellers Association. At the end of 2007, she returned to the Spiegel Group, initially as press officer and head of corporate communications at Spiegel-Verlag, later also as head of events.
(*1981) has been Managing Director of manager magazin Verlagsgesellschaft mbH and manager magazin new media GmbH & Co. KG. After graduating from the Cologne School of Journalism with a degree in economics, Lachman worked as a correspondent on Wall Street in New York. In 2008, the British-born journalist joined the Financial Times Deutschland team in Hamburg and worked for what would later become Gruner + Jahr Wirtschaftsmedien, first as an editor and later as team leader. She also worked for NDR Info and as a media trainer for board members and managers. She has been editor-in-chief of Xing since 2015 and built up a multimedia editorial team for the network. She joined the Spiegel Group in August 2019, first as Head of Digital at manager magazin and Head of Department at Spiegel Job & Karriere, and since April 2020 as Head of Digital Transformation for manager magazin Verlag.
(*1978) has been Head of Finance at the Spiegel Group since January 2020. He is also Managing Director of SPIEGEL TV GmbH, SPIEGEL TV Produktion GmbH and SPIEGEL TV Infotainment GmbH. Rathje holds a doctorate in business administration and is a former tax consultant and auditor. He joined the auditing and consulting firm Mazars in Hamburg in 2005 from Deutsche Bank as an authorised signatory. In 2013, he moved to Gruner + Jahr subsidiary DPV as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer.
Other Influential People
born in 1976, is head of documentation at Der Spiegel. He studied sociology in Hanover and Berlin. During this time, Jansson was active for Wikipedia: first as an author and speaker, from 2004 to 2009 as chairman and from 2014 to 2018 as deputy chairman of Wikimedia Deutschland. He has been working for Der Spiegel since 2008, first as an editor at Spiegel Online, and from 2010 as a documentary journalist, including in the field of data journalism. He has been a member of the management team of the documentation department since 2017 and its co-head since 2019. He has been a member of the Administrative Board of the Verwertungsgesellschaft Wort (VG Wort) on behalf of the Spiegel-Verlag since 2023 and has represented the publishing house as a shareholder of Presse-Monitor GmbH (PMG) since 2019.
