‘I’m all for climate change’: Axel Springer CEO faces heat over leaked messages

The German CEO of Europe's largest media publisher tried to use his flagship tabloid, Bild, to influence the outcome of Germany's last election and fed the newspaper his personal views attacking climate change activism, Covid measures and the former chancellor Angela Merkel, leaked messages suggest.

In a message from October 2019, the top executive ponders writing an article on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in which he calls for rescinding reunification and turning the former GDR into an "agrarian and production zone with uniform wage payments". "My mother always said it. The ossis are never going to be democrats."

Messages quoted by Die Zeit also show the publishing executive enthusiastic in his praise for Donald Trump after the January 2020 killing of the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani by an American drone strike. "My suggestion. Nobel peace prize for Trump," one message reads. "And take it away from ibama [sic]." Barack Obama was given the Nobel peace prize in 2009.

The leaked messages also raise specific questions about close links between the Springer publishing empire - whose flagship titles includes Bild, Die Welt, Business Insider and Politico - and the pro-business Free Democratic party (FDP), a junior partner in Olaf Scholz's three-party coalition government.

Such a collapse, the message intimates, would bring about his preferred outcome of a conservative-led so-called "Jamaica" coalition between Christian Democrats, Greens and FDP.

"In the spirit of freedom and variety of speech I enjoy having arguments - especially with our editors, who are all responsible and self-confident," he said. "That also explicitly applies to alleged influence taken in regards to the FDP. I am very close to the values of this party. But thank God our journalists won't let themselves be influenced."

Reichelt has not responded to German media requests on the leaked messages.

Die Zeit cited Reichelt's lawyer questioning the legality of the disciplinary procedure that led to his ousting and announcing his intention to take legal steps against Axel Springer in Germany and the US.