Germany's Axel Springer boss under fire over staff messages
The boss of Germany's Axel Springer, one of the biggest European media groups, has been forced to apologise after the publication of a series of controversial private messages triggered anger in its ranks.
"I am sorry for offending, unsettling or hurting many people with my words," the group's CEO Mathias Doepfner wrote late Saturday in a message published on the website of the Springer-owned Bild, Germany's most popular newspaper.
The weekly Die Zeit got hold of messages sent by Doepfner in recent years, principally by text message, to members of the group's management.
He was accused of making remarks that were offensive about East Germans and critical of former chancellor Angela Merkel, and that suggested Bild should help boost the poll ratings of the liberal FDP party.
On Germans from the east, whom he described using the pejorative terms "Ossis", he said that they would never become democrats and that all were "communists or fascists".
He was alluding to high poll ratings garnered by far-right and radical-left parties in the east, which was the German Democratic Republic (GDR) until reunification in 1989.
Carsten Schneider, the government's commissioner on East German affairs, had called for Doepfner's resignation over the remarks, saying his position was untenable.
There was also criticism from within the media group, with Bild's editor in chief Marion Horn publishing an editorial saying that she never allowed anyone "to dictate what Bild writes".
She said the revelations had "shaken" the Bild team and its readers, and called on Doepfner to apologise.
In his apology, Doepfner said that "when I am angry or very happy, my mobile phone becomes a lightning rod".
"I sometimes send messages to people whom I really trust that are written or expressed in haste," without considering that they could be published, he added.
Doepfner has been leading Springer for about than 20 years, and is also the third-biggest shareholder of the company, with a stake of nearly 22 percent.
The group's biggest shareholder is the investment fund KKR.
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"I am sorry for offending, unsettling or hurting many people with my words," the group's CEO Mathias Doepfner wrote late Saturday in a message published on the website of the Springer-owned Bild, Germany's most popular newspaper.
The weekly Die Zeit got hold of messages sent by Doepfner in recent years, principally by text message, to members of the group's management.
He was accused of making remarks that were offensive about East Germans and critical of former chancellor Angela Merkel, and that suggested Bild should help boost the poll ratings of the liberal FDP party.
On Germans from the east, whom he described using the pejorative terms "Ossis", he said that they would never become democrats and that all were "communists or fascists".
He was alluding to high poll ratings garnered by far-right and radical-left parties in the east, which was the German Democratic Republic (GDR) until reunification in 1989.
Carsten Schneider, the government's commissioner on East German affairs, had called for Doepfner's resignation over the remarks, saying his position was untenable.
There was also criticism from within the media group, with Bild's editor in chief Marion Horn publishing an editorial saying that she never allowed anyone "to dictate what Bild writes".
She said the revelations had "shaken" the Bild team and its readers, and called on Doepfner to apologise.
In his apology, Doepfner said that "when I am angry or very happy, my mobile phone becomes a lightning rod".
"I sometimes send messages to people whom I really trust that are written or expressed in haste," without considering that they could be published, he added.
Doepfner has been leading Springer for about than 20 years, and is also the third-biggest shareholder of the company, with a stake of nearly 22 percent.
The group's biggest shareholder is the investment fund KKR.
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