Hubert Burda (born 9 February 1940) is a German billionaire publisher. He is the owner, publisher and general partner of Hubert Burda Media, a global media company of more than 600 media products, including websites, print magazines and other brands. It operates in 20 countries, predominantly in Germany and the UK. Its brands include Focus, Bunte and Radio Times.
Burda is chairman of the conference Digital Life Design (DLD), which takes place annually in January in Munich.
Forbes Magazine estimates his net worth at $4 billion.
Early life
Burda is the youngest son of the publishing couple Franz and Aenne Burda, alongside his older brothers Franz and Frieder.
As a sixth-form pupil he took painting lessons daily and hoped to become a painter, against his father's wishes. His father permitted him to study art history only on condition that he wait until after the age of 25 to begin.
Burda attended the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, where he studied art history with Hans Sedlmayr, as well as archaeology and sociology. He earned his doctorate in art history before the age of 26; his dissertation was titled Die Ruine in Hubert Robert's Pictures.
After several traineeships in US advertising agencies and publishers, Burda worked until 1974 as publishing director of the Burda magazine . As an independent project, in 1969 he founded the magazine m - The Magazine For Men.
Burda Holding
Burda assumed the role of sole shareholder and CEO of Burda Holding in 1987. In 1988, he recruited the editorial director of Bild-Zeitung, Günter Prinz, from Springer-Verlag. In addition to the program magazine Super TV, Burda also established SUPERillu, the magazine with the largest circulation in what was then East Germany, launching six weeks before German reunification.
In 1993, Burda collaborated with Helmut Markwort to develop the news magazine Focus, a rival to Der Spiegel.
In 1999, Burda renamed the holding company to Hubert Burda Media. Under his father the firm's revenues were split broadly equally between printing and publishing, but under Hubert the firm significantly expanded its digital and international operations, including joint ventures with Hachette, Microsoft and Rizzoli and international expansion into countries such as Singapore, Thailand, India, Russia.
Current operations
In 2018, Hubert Burda Media employed 12,369 staff and achieved revenues of €2.66 billion in its four divisions (Digital Brands National, Media Brands National, Media Brands International and Print).
Burda's German publishing arm generated over €650million, reaching approximately three-quarters the German population. The firm's international division recorded turnover of €413 million.
Career and memberships
As of April 2019, Forbes estimated Burda's net worth at US$4 billion. He is the third richest publisher in Germany, after Friede Springer and Elisabeth Mohn.
Burda stepped down as CEO in 2010. He has given Burda Media shares to his two children; Elisabeth and Jacob each now hold 37.4% of the company, leaving him with 25.1%.
Memberships
Member of the Advisory Council of the Association Against Forgetting - For Democracy Founder of the Academy of the Third Millennium Founder of the Iconic Turn lecture series, discussing the impact of images, photographs, mass media and technologies on culture, society and science President of the VDZ Academy of the Association of German Magazine Publishers Co-founder of European Publishers Council (EPC) Panel member of the World Economic Forum, Davos Former chairman of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Founder of the Hubert Burda Center for Innovative Communication at Ben-Gurion University of Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel Initiator of the project "Godfather for Tolerance" in support of the Jewish Center Munich, on Jakobsplatz Chairman of the Board of Trustees Germany Foundation Integration
Philanthropy
In 1975, Burda initiated the Petrarca-Preis. It was awarded to contemporary poets and translators from 1975 to 1999 and from 2010 to 2014. It was succeeded from 1999 to 2009 by the Hermann Lenz Prize, before reverting to the Petrarca Prize from 2010 to 2014.
From 1987 to 1995, Burda supported the Petrarca Translator Prize for Literary Translations. Between 1988 and 1995, he supported the Nicolas Born prize for lyrics.
In 1997, he founded the Corporate Art Prize for the cultural engagement of companies and initiatives.
In 1999, he founded the Hubert Burda Foundation, dedicated to literature, international understanding, art, culture and science. In the same year he also created the Hubert Burda Prize for Young Poetry from Eastern Europe.