A
Frisian gardener's daughter, she worked as a nanny at the Springer family's home from 1965 onwards and later became Springer's lover and eventual partner. In 1978 she became Springer's fifth (and last) wife. She is a member of the
Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Germany. After Axel Springer's death she, together with children and grandchildren from his prior marriages, inherited Springer's shares in his publishing trust. At the time, Springer was still holding 26.1 per cent of the corporation, the rest was held by the
Bavarian film trader
Leo Kirch, the
Burda family and several minor investors. Subsequently she became manager of
Axel Springer AG and sole executive manager of the Springer Holding. Under her guidance, the Springer heirs bought back the company's shares from the two Burda brothers for about
DM 531 million in 1988. Five years prior, the brothers had paid half that sum for their share. As Springer's children leaned up against her in the following years, she bought the family members out and thus took over their shares. In 2002, she (formally being the company's governing body) installed
Mathias Döpfner as the new chairman of the board. He led the Springer AG out of its crisis and dissolved the tight bond with
Munich based entrepreneur
Leo Kirch. As of July 2015, Friede Springer sits as deputy chairwoman on the supervisory board of Axel Springer AG and is the largest shareholder of the company. She owns 5.6% of Springer AG's stocks directly and has a 90% shareholding of
Axel Springer Gesellschaft für Publizistik GmbH & Co. KG, which in turn has a stake of 51.5% in Axel Springer AG. According to the
Forbes magazine, she owned a private fortune of US$5.1 billion (as of November 2017), thereby ranking as the 31st richest person on the list of Germany's wealthiest people and the 460th worldwide. She is a friend of
Angela Merkel and also a party member of the
Christian Democratic Union. As such she participated in the 12th
Federal Assembly in 2004 to elect the
President of Germany. ==Other activities==