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Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel #1, cover dated January 1947
Editor-in-Chief	Stefan Aust
Categories	Newsmagazine
Frequency	Weekly
Circulation	1,050,000 / week
Publisher	SPIEGEL-Verlag
First issue	January 4, 1947
Country	Germany
Language	German
Website	Spiegel.de
ISSN	0038-7452

Der Spiegel (The Mirror) is Europe's biggest and most influential weekly magazine, published in Hamburg, with a circulation of more than one million per week [1], having a readership of an estimated 6.5 million^{[citation needed]}.

The first edition of the Spiegel magazine was published in Hannover on 4 January 1947, a Saturday. Before that, there had been a short prelude under the name Diese Woche (This Week), which ran for a few issues starting in November 1946 and was initiated and sponsored by the British occupational administration. After clashes with the British, the magazine was handed over to the principal German editor, Rudolf Augstein, and was renamed to Der Spiegel (The Mirror). From the first edition in January 1947, Augstein held the position of an editor, which he retained right up until his death on 7 November 2002, and of the editor-in-chief.

The magazine was owned by Augstein and John Jahr after 1950; Jahr's share merged with Richard Gruner in 1965 (Gruner + Jahr). In 1969, Augstein bought out Gruner + Jahr for DM 42 million and became the sole owner; in 1971, the Gruner + Jahr company bought back a 25% share. In 1974, Augstein restructured the company to make the employees shareholders. Every employee who works at the magazine for more than three years is offered the opportunity to become an associate and participate in the management of the company as well as in the profits.

Since 1952, Der Spiegel has been residing in Hamburg. It occupies its own building in the old town.

Der Spiegel is similar in style and presentation to American newsmagazines such as Time or Newsweek, but its long, in-depth articles are more comparable to the Atlantic Monthly or the British Economist. It is known in Germany for its distinctive, academic writing style and its size, which has a lot of pages for a weekly periodical. A typical issue could run to over 200 pages, while retaining a content to advertising ratio of 2:1. More recently the magazine has evolved into an average of 140-170 pages due to the harder economical situation throughout high-quality media. However the last publications of the Spiegel returned to a size of more than 200 pages (circa since November 2006).

Der Spiegel has a long track record of uncovering political misconduct and creating scandals, earning itself the moniker "Sturmgeschütz der Demokratie" (assault gun of democracy) in its early decades. In fact, it became notorious for this role as early as 1950, when the federal parliament had to launch an inquiry into the Spiegel's accusations that bribed members of parliament had helped make Bonn (rather than Frankfurt) the seat of the West German government.

The incident that cemented the magazine's image as a sentinel of democracy, however, was the so-called Spiegel scandal in 1962. After an article had been printed that reported on the low state of readiness of the German armed forces, minister of defence and conservative figurehead Franz Josef Strauß initiated an investigation against the Spiegel, causing the editorial offices to be raided by the police and Rudolf Augstein as well as several other editors to be arrested on charges of treason. Although he had no authority to do so, Strauß even made sure that the article's author, Conrad Ahlers, was arrested in Spain where he was vacationing. The legal case collapsed soon, and the whole affair led to a major shake-up in the cabinet of chancellor Konrad Adenauer, including Strauß's resignation. The affair was widely viewed as an attack on the freedom of the press. Since then, Der Spiegel has played a significant part in uncovering various political grievances and misdeeds, including the Flick Affair.

One of the main points of criticism that has been brought against Der Spiegel concerns the language that used to be cultivated in the magazine. In 1957 the writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger published his essay Die Sprache des Spiegels (“The Language of Der Spiegel”), in which he criticised what he called a "pretended objectivity". Wolf Schneider, an eminent journalist and stylist has called Der Spiegel "the biggest mangler of the German language" and used quotations from the magazine as examples of bad German for his style guides. Their criticism was not so much one of linguistic aesthetics as an argument that Der Spiegel "hides and distorts its actual topics and issues by manipulative semantics and rhethoric rather than by reporting and analyzing them".

Opinions about the aesthetics of the language employed by Der Spiegel have changed in 1990s (if not earlier). After hiring many of Germany's best feature writers, Der Spiegel has become known for its "Edelfedern" ('noble quills' - wordsmiths). It must be acknowledged, however, that the magazine's linguistic style has not significantly changed since the early 1960s. It regularly wins the Egon Erwin Kisch award for the best German feature. Recently, Der Spiegel has joined the ranks of the proper grammar and jargon guardians with the Zwiebelfisch ("Onion fish", relating to German printer slang for a typographical error) column on the magazine's website, which has even spawned several best-selling books.

Some critics, in particular the Augstein biographer and former Der Spiegel writer Otto Köhler, have brought charges against the magazine's dealings with former Nazis, even SS officers. It is alleged that Der Spiegel, which at other times had no qualms about exposing the Nazi past of public figures, may have distorted history and protected perpetrators when it hired these insiders to write about Third Reich topics.

At the time of the 1991 Lok Sabha elections, Der Spiegel summarized the communal riots in India as follows: Since 1947, Indian statisticians have counted 11,000 riots with 12,000 Muslim victims. This stance made some Indian writers put it along with Muslim India and Radiance, as Hindu victims were not mentioned.^{[citation needed]}

Scan of the cover of a more recent edition of Der Spiegel ("Who runs Germany? – One Year of Grand Coalition" with Chancellor Angela Merkel as Sancho Panza on a donkey and Vice Chancellor Franz Müntefering as Don Quixote.) (44/30.10.2006)

With Stefan Aust taking over in 1994, the paper's political stance is said to have drifted towards the right. Some argue its position had changed from being critical, but supportive towards the red-Green government to a "neo-liberal", "Thatcherist" stance. Others reply that Der Spiegel always used to be critical of those momentarily in power - be it the right or of the left. In fact, politicians of all stripes who had to deal with the magazine's attention often voiced their disaffection for it. Outspoken conservative Franz Josef Strauß contended that Der Spiegel was "the Gestapo of our time", whereas Socialist Willy Brandt called it "Scheißblatt" (i.e. a "shitty paper") during his time as German Chancellor.

Like many German media, Der Spiegel often pictures the country in a state of decline that will lead to eventual collapse if not prevented by radical political and economic reform. In this vein, the magazine often produces well-researched feature-length articles about the problems affecting Germany (such as demographic trends, the gridlock of the federal system, or the difficulties of the education system), and describes the current thoughts and options on how they might be resolved.

In March 2004, a controversy arose over the paper's harsh title-page polemic against Germany's wind power policy. Harald Schumann, a staff writer whose more balanced article on the same subject had not been accepted before, quit the magazine, accusing the editor-in-chief of authoritarian leadership and suppression of dissenting views among the writing staff. There have been speculations that Aust's involvement in real estate whose value might be lowered by the planned construction of nearby wind generators has led to the magazine's swing of opinion, as its reporting on regenerative power had been generally positive in the years before. Despite the criticism, the report in question was followed up by similarly aggressive articles attacking solar power.

Spiegel headquarters, Hamburg

The Spiegel's circulation rose fast, and so did its influence. From 15,000 copies in 1947, it grew to 65,000 in 1948 and 437,000 in 1961. By the 1970s it had reached a plateau at over 900,000 copies. Since then the circulation has gone up and down but overall changed little. The one million barrier was broken in 1990, perhaps due to a great number of new readers in East Germany. The influence that the magazine enjoys rests on two pillars; firstly the moral authority that was established by notable pieces of investigative journalism during the early years and reinforced by a number of impressive scoops during the 1980s; secondly the power of the Spiegel publishing house. It has been producing a TV programme, called Spiegel TV, since 1988, and further diversified during the 1990s. Among other things, Spiegel Verlag now publishes the monthly Manager Magazin.

In 1993 the publishing company Hubert Burda Media introduced the weekly magazine FOCUS which was designed to be an alternative to the Spiegel, featuring a flashier layout and a political slant that was more right-wing than the Spiegel's. It has been successful, eventually reaching roughly the Spiegel's circulation, but some critics consider it to be intellectually inferior.

Spiegel Online [2] (abbreviated SPON) was introduced in 1994. Initially, it was only available to Compuserve users. The first web issue followed about half a year later. Original content produced by its own editorial team is complemented by content purchased from news agencies. In addition to that, selected articles from the print edition are available online at no cost (this selection used to be quite comprehensive). The rest of the print publication is available in PDF format for a fee. Spiegel Online has been on a tight budget since 2000. Its editors are not compensated as well as their print counterparts, they receive special Spiegel Online rates. In 2002 archived articles were declared premium content; they are no longer freely available and have to be purchased. On 21 October 2004, an official English version called "Spiegel International" was introduced. Nevertheless, Spiegel Online is the most popular online resource for news in Germany.

Spiegel Online won the Grimme Online Award in 2005.

• 1962-1968 : Claus Jacobi
• 1968-1973: Günter Gaus
• 1973- 1986: Erich Böhme and Johannes K. Engel
• 1986 -1989: Erich Böhme and Werner Funk
• 1989-1994: Hans Werner Kilz and Wolfgang Kaden
• Since 1994: Stefan Aust

• Spiegel.de, the magazine's online version (German)
• Spiegel.mobi, the magazine's mobile online version (German) - Click twice for .mobi page
• Spiegel.de International (English)
• Spiegel cover gallery
• Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Die Sprache des Spiegel (German)