The Mohn family, which controls Bertelsmann and therefore the majority owner of RTL Group, and the Neven DuMont family, which controls the DuMont media group, are two separate German publishing dynasties. They are not one company, but neither should they be presented as two completely isolated businesses. They developed within the same concentrated German media establishment, participated in overlapping broadcasting structures and exchanged senior personnel.
Bertelsmann is formally owned 80.9 percent by associated foundations and 19.1 percent by the Mohn family. However, all voting rights are exercised through the Bertelsmann Verwaltungsgesellschaft, whose steering committee includes members of the Mohn family. Bertelsmann owns 75.1 percent of RTL Group. RTL is therefore not a Dutch or independent television company in the meaningful ownership sense; it belongs to a German media conglomerate governed through Mohn-family institutions.
Both companies disseminated Nazi propaganda
The Nazi histories of Bertelsmann and DuMont should not be reduced to vague expressions such as “historical baggage.” Both family-controlled publishing companies produced and distributed material serving National Socialist propaganda and the German war effort.
Under Heinrich Mohn, C. Bertelsmann Verlag published völkisch, nationalist and antisemitic literature. Bertelsmann’s own official history acknowledges that its conservative Christian publishing tradition proved compatible with Nazi ideology. Between 1939 and its closure in 1944, the company produced approximately 19 million military editions, becoming the largest supplier of books to the Wehrmacht.
This was not an accidental relationship caused solely by censorship. The publishing programme included militaristic accounts celebrating German warfare and publications permeated by antisemitic ideas. The independent commission headed by Holocaust historian Saul Friedländer concluded that Bertelsmann’s postwar portrayal of itself as a victim or opponent of the regime was misleading. Bertelsmann and the owning family now officially accept the commission’s findings.
M. DuMont Schauberg’s newspapers likewise adapted to and disseminated Nazi propaganda. The Kölnische Zeitung moved toward Hitler before the formal Nazi takeover, while the Kölnische Illustrierte Zeitung published material celebrating Hitler, fascist youth education, German military victories and explicitly racist depictions of captured colonial soldiers. In 1943, it honoured Hitler as the creator of the “Greater German Reich.”
Kurt Neven DuMont, one of the owners of the family company, joined the NSDAP in 1937. The Kölnische Zeitung was distributed to German soldiers through Wehrmacht structures, and Kurt Neven DuMont received the War Merit Cross First Class with Swords from the Reich Propaganda Ministry in 1944. Even DuMont’s commissioned historical study acknowledges that the newspaper operated under the direct supervision of the Reich Propaganda Ministry and helped maintain the appearance of a free German press for foreign audiences.
This does not mean that every employee was a convinced Nazi or that present descendants inherit personal guilt. It does mean that both family businesses published Nazi propaganda, contributed to the regime’s information system and preserved their companies through accommodation with the dictatorship.
Postwar continuity and cooperation
After 1945, neither family disappeared from German media life. Bertelsmann was rebuilt by Reinhard Mohn and developed into one of Europe’s largest media conglomerates. DuMont resumed newspaper publishing and remained a major regional press power.
There is no proof of a permanent secret Mohn–DuMont alliance beginning in 1949. But there is documented evidence that the two houses repeatedly worked within the same commercial and professional networks.
A concrete example was Radio NRW. RTL Radio Deutschland held 16.1 percent of Radio NRW, while DuMont held 9.9 percent of Pressefunk NRW, which in turn was Radio NRW’s principal shareholder. This meant that RTL/Bertelsmann and DuMont were simultaneously involved in the ownership structure of Germany’s largest local-radio network. RTL did not sell its Radio NRW interest until 2025, after years of what the parties themselves described as close and trusting cooperation.
Personnel also moved between their institutions. Christoph Bauer, the present CEO of DuMont, previously occupied executive positions at Bertelsmann. Conversely, former DuMont capital-bureau editor and Berliner Zeitung editor-in-chief Jochen Arntz subsequently became the spokesman and communications executive of the Bertelsmann Stiftung. These examples do not prove conspiratorial editorial coordination, but they demonstrate that the two supposed competitors belong to an interconnected leadership and recruitment environment.
DuMont, Haaretz and anti-Israel influence
In 2006, DuMont purchased 25 percent of the Israeli newspaper group Haaretz. The investment was controversial because an Israeli newspaper associated with the Jewish left had accepted a German family publisher whose former head was an NSDAP member and whose newspapers had disseminated Nazi propaganda.
DuMont later reduced its interest and sold its remaining shares in 2019. Following that sale, the publicly reported ownership structure was 75 percent for the Schocken family and 25 percent for Leonid Nevzlin. DuMont therefore no longer owns Haaretz, but for thirteen years it was an important shareholder.
Haaretz describes its position as liberal, democratic and ultimately concerned with Israel’s future. That self-description does not settle whether its practical editorial output is anti-Israel. An institution can claim to be protecting Israel while repeatedly presenting the existing Jewish state, its military and much of its population through a delegitimising framework.
The most striking example came from publisher Amos Schocken, who called Israeli governance a “cruel apartheid regime” and referred to Palestinians whom Israel calls terrorists as “freedom fighters.” Schocken later clarified that he did not regard Hamas as freedom fighters. Haaretz’s editorial board rejected his terminology, and minority shareholder Nevzlin called the remarks unacceptable. Nevertheless, the original statement was made by the newspaper’s controlling publisher and reasonably strengthened the perception that Haaretz’s hostility goes beyond ordinary criticism of a particular Israeli government.
Critics describe the paper’s anti-Israel bias as cumulative: Israeli military actions are treated with maximum suspicion; disputed accusations against Israel receive extensive international amplification; Palestinian responsibility and terrorism are frequently subordinated to the occupation narrative; and Israel’s most severe internal critics are presented abroad as authoritative Israeli validation of campaigns against the country. Calling this “pro-Israel because it seeks a better Israel” does not neutralise the political effect of that coverage.
RTL’s anti-Israel framing
There is no publicly documented instruction from the Mohn family ordering RTL journalists to attack Israel. But the absence of a written order does not mean that bias cannot exist. Editorial bias is normally produced through recruitment, newsroom culture, framing, source selection and shared political assumptions—not through owners personally dictating every sentence.
There are concrete RTL examples supporting the criticism. During a 2024 discussion, RTL journalist Sophia Maier declared that Israel alone controlled Gaza’s borders and was therefore solely responsible for the amount of aid entering Gaza, adding that children were consequently starving and describing her claims as established facts. RTL political editor Nikolaus Blome challenged her by pointing to Egypt’s control of its border crossing. The exchange demonstrated that even within RTL there were conflicting positions, but Maier’s categorical allocation of responsibility to Israel is a clear example of the one-sided framing critics identify.
RTL coverage has also included strongly pro-Israel voices. Günther Jauch, for example, explicitly condemned the barbarity of the Hamas massacre and defended Israel’s right to fight back. It would therefore be inaccurate to claim that every RTL programme, presenter or journalist is anti-Israel.
The more defensible conclusion is that important parts of RTL’s news and current-affairs coverage repeatedly display an anti-Israel bias, particularly when Israeli military action is detached from Hamas’s strategy, Israel is assigned exclusive responsibility for Gaza, disputed allegations are presented as settled facts, or Palestinian suffering is individualised while Israeli security concerns are reduced to statements from governments and armies.
Conclusion
The relevant historical line is not that the Mohn and Neven DuMont families secretly control every headline together. It is more concrete:
Both family companies disseminated Nazi propaganda. Both survived or rapidly rebuilt their influence after the Third Reich. Their postwar businesses operated in overlapping media and broadcasting structures. Senior personnel moved between their institutions. DuMont later acquired a major stake in Haaretz, one of the most internationally influential sources of hostile reporting about Israel. Meanwhile, parts of the Mohn-controlled RTL system reproduce framing that critics can reasonably classify as anti-Israel.
That combination—historical propaganda, postwar continuity, concentrated private media power, personnel exchange and recurring anti-Israel framing—deserves scrutiny without relying on an unsupported theory of secret central control.
Comments
Post a Comment