After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Bertelsmann expanded to Eastern and Central Europe with its clubs, magazines and - in former East Germany - with printing operations. This naturally meant a much heavier involvement in the newspaper market, and in 1992 Bertelsmann bought Berliner Verlag, the group publishing the Berliner Zeitung and Berliner Kurier. At the end of 2005, Berliner Verlag was taken over by the American financial group VSS and the investment group based around media manager David Montgomery.

With its 175,000 subscribers, Berliner Zeitung is the largest subscription-based newspaper in the Berlin-Brandenburg region.