The director of Deutsche Welle (DW), Peter Limbourg, received a basic salary of 290,000 euros last year. A spokesman for the station told the Evangelical Press Service. The benefits in kind would have amounted to around 6,200 euros. It was about the pecuniary benefit of the privately taxable company car or the Bahncard. Compared to 2021, the basic salary and benefits in kind have remained unchanged.
The director’s service contract does not provide for any wage increases, the DW spokesman explained. The salaries have therefore remained unchanged in the current year. According to Deutsche Welle, Limbourg is not a member of any supervisory board or other supervisory body for which he receives remuneration.
Peter Limbourg has been director of Deutsche Welle since the beginning of October 2013. The international broadcaster was founded 70 years ago – and imposed a savings program on its birthday. In contrast to ARD and ZDF, Deutsche Welle is not financed from broadcasts, but directly from taxpayers’ money. She is not legally obliged to disclose the director’s remuneration. Since there are no corresponding publication requirements in the Deutsche Welle Act, there is no information on this in the DW annual reports and their appendices.
For ZDF and Deutschlandradio, on the other hand, there have been specific provisions for the publication of directors’ salaries and the remuneration of directors for several years. From the beginning of 2024, identical and thus uniform regulations should apply to the nine ARD state broadcasters. As a reaction to the affair at the RBB about the former director Patricia Schlesinger and the allegations of nepotism made at the time, the federal states had decided to make the broadcasters additional transparency requirements.
As director of Deutsche Welle, Peter Limbourg, with a salary of 290,000 euros, is roughly on a par with Karola Wille, the head of broadcasting at Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR), a medium-sized ARD state broadcaster. According to the MDR, Wille’s basic salary has been a total of 295,000 euros per year since 2021. Incidentally, Tom Buhrow gets the highest salary for a director of a state broadcasting company within the ARD: The head of West German Broadcasting (WDR) got according to the broadcaster in 2021 a basic salary of 413,000 euros.