I went to a party in the ‘Belly of the Beast’ last week. For an EUobserver journalist, that means the HQ of Axel Springer, the German media giant that publishes, among other things, our (sort-of) rival, Politico, and Bild, one of the world’s best-selling tabloid newspapers, and Die Welt, Germany’s pro-market rightwing broadsheet.
It also recently purchased the UK’s increasingly hard-right and Nigel Farage-friendly Daily Telegraph, a venerable 171-year-old institution. For €660m, in cash.
Specifically, I was on the 19th floor of the Springer HQ in Berlin, offering panoramic 360-degree views of the capital, where it is easy – deliberately so, I thought – to feel like one of the oligarch rulers of the world.
Anachronistically, for a 1960s skyscraper, the top-floor club is fitted out like a 19th-century London gentleman’s club – oak panelling and leather sofas and, most anachronistically of all, you are allowed to smoke.
The journalists club on the 19th floor of Axel Springer HQ in Berlin (Source: Wikimedia)
