HUBERT BURDA is publisher and chairman of the board of Hubert Burda Media, publishing 258 magazines inside and outside Germany (including Focus, Bunte). The company holds stakes in numerous digital enterprises as well as radio networks, TV productions and direct marketing, giving it a total turnover of $1.9 billion (2005). The company is a market leader by reach in Germany and is a leading publisher in several Eastern European countries, as well as in Russia and Turkey.
Born in 1940, he studied History of Art and Sociology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich.
Hubert Burda is President of the Association of German Magazine Publishers (VDZ) and co-founder of the European Publishers Council (EPC). He awards the Hermann Lenz Prize for German-language Literature and set up the Hubert Burda Foundation with a view to promoting inter-disciplinary exchanges on future trends. As chairman of the board of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) in Munich he is catalyzing excellence networks between science, business and politics. Hubert Burda also founded the Hubert Burda Center for Innovative Communications at the Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel. Through his involvement in the "Partners in Tolerance" initiative, he supports Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation and the production of educational CDs containing testimonies from Holocaust survivors. Together with other Munich-based media companies, he initiated the "Paten für Toleranz" project to support the Jewish Centre at Jakobsplatz in Munich and received the Leo-Baeck-Preis 2006.
In addition to numerous prizes in recognition of his achievements in publishing and business, including the "European Print Media Prize", the title of Honorary Professor was bestowed to Hubert Burda, the title of honorary senator by the Staatliche Hochschule Karlsruhe (ZKM) and the Heinrich Hertz visiting professorship at the University of Karlsruhe.