Die Welt


Die Welt is a German national daily newspaper, published as a broadsheet by Axel Springer SE.

History

Die Welt was founded in Hamburg in 1946 by the British occupying forces, aiming to provide a "quality newspaper" modelled on The Times. It originally carried news and British-viewpoint editorial content, but from 1947 it adopted a policy of providing two leading articles on major questions, one British and one German. The newspaper was bought by Axel Springer in 1953.
The 1993 circulation of the paper was 209,677 copies. At its peak in the occupation period, it had a circulation of around a million.
The modern paper takes a self-described "liberal cosmopolitan" position in editing, but Die Welt is generally considered to be conservative.
The average circulation of Die Welt is currently about 180,000 and the paper can be obtained in more than 130 countries. Daily regional editions appear in Berlin and Hamburg, and in 2002 the paper experimented with a Bavarian edition. A daily regional supplement also appears in Bremen. The main editorial office is in Berlin, in conjunction with the Berliner Morgenpost.
Die Welt is the flagship newspaper of the Axel Springer publishing group. Its leading competitors are the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Frankfurter Rundschau. Financially, it has been a lossmaker for many years.
Die Welt was a founding member of the European Dailies Alliance, and has a longstanding co-operation with comparable daily newspapers from other countries, including The Daily Telegraph, Le Figaro, and ABC.
The newspaper currently publishes a compact edition entitled Welt Kompakt, a 32-page cut-down version of the main broadsheet. Welt Kompakt has a fresher look and is targeted to a younger public. The paper does not appear on Sundays, but the linked publication Welt am Sonntag takes its place.
In November 2010, a redesign for the newspaper was launched, featuring a new logo with a dark blue globe, a reduced number of columns from seven to six, and typography based on the Freight typeface designed by Joshua Darden. Welt Kompakt was also redesigned to use that typeface. In 2009, the Sunday edition Welt am Sonntag was recognized as one of the "World’s Best-Designed Newspapers" by the Society for News Design, along with four other newspapers.
On 2 May 2014, the Swiss German business magazine BILANZ began to be published as a monthly supplement of Die Welt.
On 18 January 2018 the German TV channel N24 changed its name to Welt.

Bans

The paper was banned in Egypt in February 2008 due to the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

''Welt''-Literaturpreis

Since 1999, the Die Welt book supplement Die Literarische Welt has presented an annual literature prize available to international authors. The award is in honor of Willy Haas who founded Die Literarische Welt in 1925.
; Recipients
In 2017 Die Welt was among the ten most cited sources in the German Wikipedia. Currently it is included in the top 50 most visited websites in Germany.