Stern (magazine)

Henri Nannen created the magazine[1] out of the youth paper Zick Zack,[2][3] and the first issue appeared on 1 August 1948.[4][5][6] This was possible after obtaining a licence from the British military government to rename Zick-Zack to Stern,[7] for which Nannen had taken over the licence a few months before. The first issue had 16 pages, with the cover showing actress Hildegard Knef.[8] Nannen also edited the magazine of which headquarters is in Hamburg.[9][10]

In the 1960s the magazine became the founding member of the European Car of the Year.[11] In 1963, Stern awarded the Deutscher Erzählerpreis (German Narrator Award) to a number of authors, including Werner Beumelburg, Daniel Christoff, Franz Karl Franchy, Gisela Frankenberg, Josef Ilmberger, Juliane Kay, Sybil Gräfin Schönfeldt and Ursula Sigismund.[12][13]

In 1965 the magazine was sold to Gruner + Jahr.[5] In 1968, Stern and Die Zeit began publishing the Stern-Zeit bi-weekly paper for the blind, which stopped publication in mid-2007 due to financial problems.

Stern is published on a weekly basis[14] and has a leftist stance.[1] In the 2013 elections the magazine was among the supporters of the SPD.[15]

In 1999 the circulation of Stern was 1,124,400 copies.[16] In 2000 the magazine had a circulation of 1,082,000 copies.[14] Its average circulation was 1,186,000 copies in 2003.[17] In the fourth quarter of 2006 its circulation was 1,019,300 copies.[17] It slightly rose to 1,042,000 copies for 2006 as a whole.[18] Its circulation went down to 895,962 copies in 2010[19] and to 750,810 copies in 2014.[6]

In 1950, Stern published an article that criticized the Allies for wasting money and resources during their occupation of Germany. British military authorities responded and had its publication shut down for a week.

It is notorious internationally for publishing the so-called Hitler Diaries in its 28 April 1983 edition.[20] Scientific examination soon proved them forgeries committed by Konrad Kujau, who had created the journals between 1981 and 1983. A British broadsheet newspaper, The Sunday Times, had begun a serialization of the diaries, but after the hoax was uncovered, cancelled it and issued an official apology.[21] The fiasco led to the resignation of the magazine's editors and a major scandal that is still regarded as a low point in German journalism. The incident caused a major crisis for the magazine. Its credibility was severely damaged and it had to rebuild its reputation from an abysmal level. It took the magazine ten years to regain its pre-scandal status and reputation.[20]

In Germany, it is also remembered for the publication in 1971 of We've had abortions!, a public declaration by several hundred women provoked by Alice Schwarzer to defy its illegality at that time in West Germany.

In 1990, Stern published the title story "I am a masochist" in which author Sina-Aline Geißler discussed her literary coming-out as a member of the BDSM scene. This caused an intense public debate, and radical feminists occupied the editorial office of Stern.

Four Stern journalists have been killed while reporting. In January 1995, Jochen Piest was killed by a sniper near the Chechen capital of Grozny. Gabriel Grüner and Volker Krämer were killed near Dulje, Kosovo. In November 2001 Volker Handloik was killed in an ambush in northern Afghanistan.[22]

• 1948–1980: Henri Nannen
• 1980–1983: Rolf Gillhausen, Peter Koch and Felix Schmidt
• 1983–1984: Rolf Gillhausen with Peter Scholl-Latour
• 1984–1986: Rolf Winter
• 1986–1989: Heiner Bremer, Michael Jürgs and Klaus Liedtke
• 1989–1990: Michael Jürgs with Herbert Riehl-Heyse
• 1990–1994: Rolf Schmidt-Holtz
• 1994–1998: Werner Funk
• 1999–1999: Michael Maier
• 1999–2013: Thomas Osterkorn and Andreas Petzold
• 2013–2014: Dominik Wichmann
• 2014–2018: Christian Krug
• 2019–present: Florian Gless and Anna-Beeke Gretemeier

• List of magazines in Germany

• Official website (in German)