Charles von Graffenried deceased
Charles von Graffenried passed away early Tuesday morning. The founder of Espace Media had been a member of the board of directors of the Swiss media group Tamedia since 2007.
The Board of Directors, management, and employees of Tamedia mourn the loss of Charles von Graffenried and extend their condolences to his family. Tamedia announced this in a press release on Tuesday evening.
Born in 1925, von Graffenried, a lawyer and notary, was the founder and chairman of the board of directors of the Bern-based media company Espace Media and publisher of the Berner Zeitung and the newspaper Der Bund. With the sale of Espace Media to Tamedia in 2007, von Graffenried also became a member of the board of directors of the Zurich-based media company. Von Graffenried also owned the Von Graffenried Group (GR), which included the private bank Von Graffenried, a real estate company, a trust office, and a legal division. In 2010, the business magazine *Bilanz* estimated his net worth at between 300 and 400 million Swiss francs.
«I don't want to be the one to bring down the government»
Von Graffenried, a member of one of Bern’s most prominent families, laid the foundation for his career in publishing when, as an entrepreneur, he formed the Berner Zeitung (BZ) in 1979 through the merger of the Berner Nachrichten and the Berner Tagblatt. In 2001, Espace Media emerged from the BZ publishing division responsible for the Berner Tagblatt via Berner Tagblatt Medien. Thus, for many years in Bern, it was von Graffenried, of all people —the Bernese patrician—served as the publisher of the BZ and thus acted as the counterpart to the traditional Bernese newspaper *Der Bund*, which remained independent until 1995 and was much more a bourgeois-liberal daily in the style of von Graffenried than the *Berner Zeitung* itself.
Ultimately, however, it was von Graffenried who saved *Der Bund*—which was deeply in the red at the time—in 2003 by acquiring a portion of the NZZ’s shares in *Der Bund* and bringing the newspaper under the umbrella of Espace Media in accordance with the so-called «Bern Model.» “I’ve always said that I don’t want to be the Bund-killer,” von Graffenried said at the time.
From then on, the *Bund* and the *Berner Zeitung* continued to operate as editorially independent newspapers, side by side and in collaboration with one another. This remains the case today, even after Tamedia and Espace Media merged in 2007. Von Graffenried played a part in ensuring that two daily newspapers are still published in Bern today—both of which he read year in and year out.
Commitment Beyond Death
Von Graffenried also made a significant contribution to the press through the Local Journalism Award, which was presented under the title «BZ Local Journalism Award» until 2010 and, starting in 2011, under the name «Reinhardt von Graffenried Foundation Media Award.» With this award, the commitment of Bern’s most famous publisher to the press will thus continue even after his death. (SDA)
(Image: Keystone)
