The Bertelsmann Stiftung has been the subject of public debate. In 2007, Jens Wernicke and Torsten Bultmann published an anthology, entitled "Netzwerk der Macht – Bertelsmann" ("Network of Power – Bertelsmann"), which takes a critical look at the structure and activities of the Bertelsmann Stiftung. The book's 30 contributors focused in particular on the foundation's non-profit status and
political influence. The anthology generated widespread public debate on the Bertelsmann Stiftung. Published in 2010, the book "Bertelsmannrepublik Deutschland – eine Stiftung macht Politik" ("Bertelsmann's Republic of Germany: A Foundation Sets Policy") by author and journalist Thomas Schuler gained even greater attention. In it, Schuler describes how the Bertelsmann Stiftung seeks to make contact with leading politicians and to
advise them. He criticized the Bertelsmann Stiftung as being "undemocratic" and lacking in transparency. In his opinion, the originally good idea behind the foundation developed into a "distorted world," the basic organization of which he called into question. Schuler also criticized German foundation law, which allows foundations such as the Bertelsmann Stiftung to exist at all.
Commercial interests Due to its majority interest in the Bertelsmann Group, the Bertelsmann Stiftung has been repeatedly accused of combining non-profit and
commercial interests. In 2009, the journalist and author Annette Jensen asserted that the Bertelsmann Stiftung's proposals
generate artificial demand, particularly in terms of the purported need to
streamline local government, a demand which the foundation then meets, for example through the Bertelsmann subsidiary
Arvato. She suggested that the
RTL and
VOX television stations belonging to the Bertelsmann Group and numerous
Gruner + Jahr magazines served the foundation by disseminating its messages. The sociologist and entrepreneur Frank Adloff has argued that it is indefensible that the foundation does not need to justify the use of its funds before any parliament or oversight authority. In the United States, he noted, non-profit foundations are not permitted to hold more than a 20% stake in a company in order to avoid possible
conflicts of interest; in addition, they have to provide a
public accounting of their expenditures. By consulting with politicians outside of government settings, Lieb suggests, the Bertelsmann Stiftung is pursuing a "
privatization of politics," a situation that offers mutual benefits: civil servants and politicians are given a protected space where they alone are provided with information free of charge and where they can engage in discussion, while the Bertelsmann Stiftung secures access to all the projects it wants to influence. Thus, no matter who is elected, the Bertelsmann Stiftung is always part of the government. In 2008, the journalist and politician Julika Sandt criticized the growing influence of the Bertelsmann Stiftung on
German health care, saying that initiatives developed by the foundation lead to preferential treatment for
privatized clinics and medical care centers to the detriment of self-employed physicians. According to Sandt, because Brigitte Mohn was a member of both the Bertelsmann Stiftung executive board and the supervisory board of
Rhön-Klinikum, the foundation's neutrality in the health sector is questionable. In 2012, Josef Kraus, president of the , spoke critically about the influence of the Bertelsmann Stiftung on
education policy. He described its studies as "
unscientific" and as "
scare tactics." Its activities almost always involved turning some alleged administrative failure into a scandal, Kraus said. He called on politicians to stop allowing themselves to be influenced by the Bertelsmann Stiftung and to take criticism of the foundation seriously. The non-profit organization Lobbycontrol sees the Bertelsmann Stiftung as a business-oriented initiative, similar to the "
Initiative Neue Soziale Marktwirtschaft" (Initiative for a New Social Market Economy) or the "
Stiftung Marktwirtschaft" (Free Market Foundation). Lobbycontrol criticizes, for example, the "Standortcheck" (Business Location Check), which it says amounts to a canonical neoliberal reform. The Bertelsmann Stiftung has repeatedly refuted criticism asserting a lack of democratic legitimacy and unpermitted political influence. For example, Gunter Thielen, former chairman and CEO of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, made it clear that the foundation was not a "secret government," that the formation of public opinion and policy is not a "top-down process," and that it was unimaginable that a foundation or a company could use its own ideas to influence or control a country like the Federal Republic of Germany.
Political neutrality The Bertelsmann Stiftung describes itself as politically non-partisan. The practical implementation of this principle, however, has been questioned from several sides, in particular because the foundation has only established contacts with "radical supporters of market policies" among left-leaning parties. but this is also controversial; some critics have also labeled the Bertelsmann Stiftung
neoliberal.
Non-profit status In 2006, the author and journalist Harald Schumann discussed the non-profit status of the Bertelsmann Stiftung in the
Tagesspiegel newspaper. According to Schumann, the "
shadow government in Gütersloh" runs on de facto on public money, because Reinhard Mohn saved an over €2 billion in
inheritance and
gift taxes when he transferred three-quarters of the Bertelsmann Group capital shares to the foundation. Moreover, he asserts, the annual dividend payment to the foundation is tax-free and, with its annual budget of around €60 million, the foundation does not spend nearly as much as it costs the state in terms of lost revenue. Arno Klönne, a sociologist and political scientist, has argued that the Bertelsmann Stiftung's non-profit nature was questionable because, he maintains, it actively promotes the business of the Bertelsmann Group. Ultimately, he suggests, its goal is to manage society using corporate methods and to
privatize the tasks that should be handled by the state. In 2009, a group of independent legal experts found that the Bertelsmann Stiftung no longer met the requirements for a non-profit organization. On the contrary, they argued, the
tax exemption was unjustly being used for the purpose of carrying out a transformation of society according to the beliefs of the Bertelsmann Stiftung's founder, Reinhard Mohn, by means of private, tax-financed private policy consulting and by bypassing democratic decision making processes through public discourse in Germany's constitutional bodies. The Bertelsmann Stiftung has always rejected these accusations, noting that its non-profit status has been recognized by the tax authorities and is reviewed on an ongoing basis.
Social welfare cuts In 2007, the trade union ver.di terminated its cooperation with the Bertelsmann Stiftung. The reason was that Arvato, a division of the Bertelsmann Group, declared the privatization of public services a strategic business area. A corresponding motion was passed at the union's federal congress against the wishes of its federal governing board. The Bertelsmann Stiftung is the driving force behind privatizations and cuts to
social welfare programs, critics claimed. This assessment was supported by participants at "Das Schattenkabinett aus Gütersloh" ("The Shadow Cabinet from Gütersloh"), a conference critical of Bertelsmann. In addition to
ver.di, other participants included
Attac,
GEW,
IG Metall and the Otto Brenner Foundation. The Bertelsmann Stiftung rejected the criticism from ver.di in particular as a "misunderstanding," == Notes and references ==