Stern (, German for "Star") is an illustrated, broadly left-liberal, weekly current affairs magazine published in Hamburg, Germany, by Gruner + Jahr, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann. Under the editorship (1948–1980) of its founder Henri Nannen, it attained a circulation of between 1.5 and 1.8 million, the largest in Europe's for a magazine of its kind.
Unusually for a popular magazine in post-war West Germany, and most notably in the contributions to 1975 of Sebastian Haffner, Stern investigated the origin and nature of the preceding tragedies of German history. In 1983, however, its credibility was seriously damaged by its purchase and syndication of the forged Hitler Diaries. A sharp drop in sales anticipated the general fall in newsprint readership in the new century. By 2019, circulation had fallen under half a million.
History and profile
Journalistic style
Henri Nannen produced the first 16-page issue (with the actress Hildegard Knef on the cover) on 1 August 1948. He had been able to obtain the licence from the British military government in Hannover despite his wartime service in , a military propaganda unit in Italy. He moved the magazine to Hamburg where, in 1965, he founded , now one of the largest publishing houses in Europe.
Under Nannen's direction, sought to present itself as an exemplar of what in Germany is called ('useful journalism'). The emphasis is on providing sufficient background on topic to allow readers opportunity to arrive at their own judgements rather than have these decided for them editorially or (as was commonly the case in the tabloid output of rival publisher ) in the headlines. As a result articles tended to be longer and more investigative, while distinguished from those of the similarly directed by the wider range of social and life-style issues covered, and by a greater reliance of illustration and graphic design.
Breaks with the Adenauer consensus
Stern was open to the questioning, from a liberal and left perspective, of the post-war political and social order in West Germany identified with the long Chancellorship (1949–1963) of Konrad Adenauer.
In the 1962 affair, Stern denounced as violations of constitutional norms and press freedom, the effective closure by the government of the magazine's publishing rival. In a contest seen a key turning point in the culture of the Federal Republic away from the deference demanded by the old ('authoritarian state'), Stern (together with Springer Press and ) offered presses, teletypes and office space so it could continue publishing while being investigated for national security disclosures.
found nothing to extenuate in the later violence of the Red Army Faction (the " Gang"), but in the 1960s it had not been completely hostile to the student protest movement from which the "urban guerillas" first emerged. In June 1967, it permitted Sebastian Haffner to denounce the police response to a demonstration in West Berlin in which student protester Benno Ohnesorg was killed, as "a systematic, cold-blooded, planned pogrom". In contrast the Springer's responded: "Students threaten: We shoot back".
Like the student left, was willing to break the relative post-war silence on the recent National-Socialist past. In serialisations Haffner developed his thesis that Hitler's war was a tragedy foretold in the circumstances of German unification in the nineteenth century. It was a position consistent with editorial support for the of the new Social-Democratic Chancellor Willi Brandt. As interpreted by many conservatives this amounted to an acceptance of Germany's postwar division, and territorial losses in the east, as permanent.
(No. 50, 1970) published Sven Simon's (Axel Springer Jr.) iconic picture of Brandt kneeling before the memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on 20 Dezember 1970 on a double spread. It was accompanied by an interview with Brandt's Polish host, premier Józef Cyrankiewicz, with whom he had that day signed the Treaty of Warsaw. At the same time, sought to discredit the rival conservative weekly Quick, which in opposition to the Treaty had published material from its secret protocols. It accused the magazine's editor Hans van Nouhuys of having been a double agent, at one time in the employ of the East German . successfully withstood the charge of defamation.
