Deutsche Welle

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Deutsche Welle headquarters.

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Deutsche Welle is a German news and information broadcaster focused on the international market. It broadcasts programs in 32 languages through 5,000 regional partners on television, radio, and online. The company is headquartered in Bonn, Germany, with offices in Berlin and 16 other locations, including Washington; Beirut; Kyiv, Ukraine; Moscow; London; and Jerusalem. It employs some 4,000 workers worldwide. Peter Limbourg, director general of Deutsche Welle, was appointed to a second six-year term in 2018. He is set to retire in summer 2025.

DW is taxpayer funded, but broadcasts without government interference. It is a member of the European Broadcasting Union. In 2023, it reported a weekly global audience of 320 million. DW’s broadcasting focuses on six areas:

Deutsche Welle, which translates to German Wave, was established in 1953 as a shortwave service. Its first program aired May 3. The three-hour broadcast opened with a greeting from Theodor Heuss, president of West Germany, and aired throughout both West and East Germany. At the time, West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany) was under the supervision of the Allied High Commission, while East Germany (the German Democratic Republic) was under Soviet control. At first, only German-language broadcasts were permitted, but foreign-language programming was approved later. English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish broadcasts began in 1954. DW launched a transcription service supplying English-language programming to American university radio stations that same year.

DW established its first German language instructional course in 1957, and added an Arab service to its radio programming in 1959.

In 1961, Otto Wesemann, a German business journalist, was appointed DW’s first director-general by the Broadcasting Board, chaired by Felix von Eckardt. The early part of the decade also saw tremendous expansion in broadcasting, including programming in Hungarian, Persian, Polish, Russian, Slovak, and Spanish in Latin America and Portuguese in Brazil. In 1962, DW’s English service expanded to Australia, East Asia, Africa, and other regions.

DW added television in 1963, providing film copies in addition to radio manuscripts and tapes. Sudan was the first nation to receive film copies. Still more languages were added to DW’s radio service, including Kiswaheli, Indonesian, and Bulgarian, in 1963 and 1964.

In 1964, DW launched Hindi and Urdu radio programs, debuting broadcasts in India and Pakistan. The programs aimed to explain German perspectives during the Cold War while fostering understanding between the two nations. DW broadcasts in English, Hindi, and other languages on television, radio, and online, including DD Free Dish and regional partners in India.

In 1965, DW began its Chinese service and started a relay station in Kigali, Rwanda. In addition, the German Television Transcription Corporation (TransTel) was founded, and the Deutsche Welle Training Center, known today as DWFZ, began offering courses for radio journalists outside of Germany.

DW continued to expand its services and programming throughout the 1970s, beginning in 1970 with “The Baumann Family,” a language course offered worldwide and jointly produced by Deutschlandfunk and Goethe-Institut Inter Nationes. The same year, Afghanistan began receiving radio broadcasts in Pushtu and Dari.

In 1973, DW, with partners TransTel and Deutsche Presse-Agentur, a German news agency founded in 1949, acquired the European Television Service GmbH. DW also partnered with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to jointly construct a relay system on Antigua. The next year, another relay station began operating in Malta. In 1976, the DW-RADIO program “Across the Atlantic” was rebroadcast by a U.S. radio affiliate, marking the first rebroadcast of a DW-RADIO show.

DW continued to grow throughout the 1980s, with a new radio station in Sri Lanka and a move to a new corporate home in Cologne. In 1983, “The Baumann Family” was discontinued, replaced by a new show, “Say it in German.”

DW presented its first literature prize in 1985 to Kalu Okpi of Nigeria and Egyptian Muslim scholar El Mahadi El Tayeb. In 1988, DW-RADIO created a unified English Service that consolidated regional programs for Asia, Africa, and North America.

DW saw little expansion through the 1980s, but grew rapidly in the 1990s. At the beginning of the decade, the company agreed to cooperate with Radio Moscow. In 1991, DW assumed control of former Soviet radio jamming posts near the Russian cities of Kuibychev, Novosibirsk, and Irkutsk. The posts were used to strengthen radio signals into Asia.

DW-TV, which provides programming worldwide via satellite, debuted on April 1, 1992. Initially, the programming blocks were offered in German and English; Spanish was added a few months later. Also in 1992, DW-RADIO began its Albanian service.

In 1994, DW staff at a relay station in Kigali, Rwanda, found themselves trapped in their building as a civil war raged within the city. German members of the staff were rescued by Belgian armed forces. The fate of Rwandan staffers is unknown.

Another milestone that year was the debut of DW’s first website, the first public broadcaster in Germany to venture onto the Internet. 

DW moved its headquarters to Bonn from Cologne in 1995, at the request of the German government. The new offices were in the Schuermann Building, constructed initially to house elements of the German Parliament. In addition, DW joined the BBC World Service, Radio France Internationale, and Radio Nederland as a member of the European Digital Radio project, sponsored by the European Union.

During a 1998 restructuring of DW-RADIO, several national services were discontinued, including Danish, Dutch, and Italian, while others were combined. Later that year, a consortium of international broadcasters, businesses, and other groups called Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) was established in Guangzhou, China. Its goal was to dramatically improve the quality of the AM frequency band through digitalization. In 1999, Radio Guangdong started broadcasting the Chinese Service of DW-RADIO. The service courted controversy by broadcasting an interview with Taiwan’s president, Lee Teng-hui. As a result, tensions flared between China and Taiwan.

In 2000, DW-RADIO launched its first Ukrainian program, a 15-minute broadcast that was expanded to 30 minutes by the fall. The following year, the Ukrainian service grew to one hour a day, and the Macedonian service expanded to two hours from 30 minutes.

In 2001, the German government granted DW permission to establish GERMAN TV, a subscription channel for Germans and German speakers abroad, initially targeting North America. In the United States, it launched 24-hour programming in 2002.

DW-TV introduced KINO – The German Film Magazine in 2003 to promote German motion pictures to an international market. A year later, on January 1, the DW-Akademie was established to combine all divisions of the broadcasting company that promote education and training in print and broadcast journalism.

A new Arabic service debuted in March 2005. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Kuwaiti Minister of Information Faisal Al-Hajj, and DW Director General Erik Bettermann met March 1 in Kuwait city to press a ceremonial button to mark the launch.

DW introduced a 24-hour English-language news channel in 2015, featuring talk shows, documentaries, and other programming.

In 2020, 20 employees of Deutsche Welle accused the company of antisemitism, bullying, harassment, and racism in the workplace. The alleged incidents took place in 2018. Upper management was also accused of trying to silence the whistleblowers. DW called the allegations “unfounded.”

The following year, DW canceled its cooperative agreement with Roya TV, its Jordanian partner, over concerns about antisemitic and anti-Israeli content and caricatures on its social media. Also in 2021, the company suspended and later fired four employees and one freelancer with its Arabic service over offensive social media comments about Israel and Jews. 

In 2022, the Russian government labeled DW a foreign agent and banned it from broadcasting within the country in response to Germany blocking the Russian state-run TV channel RT DE. DW subsequently moved its studio to Riga, Latvia, where it continued to cover Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Since 2015, the DW Freedom of Speech Award has honored individuals and initiatives for their commitment to freedom of expression and press freedom. The first recipient was Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, who was imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for advocating free expression.

In 2020, the award was given to 17 journalists from 14 countries, representing all journalists worldwide who had been threatened or arrested for their coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. The award ceremony is a key event at DW’s annual Global Media Forum in Bonn.

Deutsche Welle got its start as a shortwave service providing news and information within Germany, but quickly expanded its reach internationally with radio news services in numerous languages. As the company entered more and more relationships with regional partners, its scope of coverage increased, along with its offerings.

DW later moved into television and digital media and established itself as one of the world’s largest providers of news and information, especially in regions where censorship and government restrictions impeded the spread of information. In 2023, DW reported 102 million viewers and online users through television distribution partners, 32 million through the company’s television channels, and tens of millions more through various social media sites.