Das magazin

Background

The magazine traditionally leads the story from the eponymous magazine founded in Germany in 1924 and by Franz Köburn, the chief editor was Hubert Miketa.

The first article of the magazine was dedicated to the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova .

At first, the magazine was published by Verlag Robert Siodmak Robert Siodmak , then by Dr. Eysler & Co. ".

The magazine focused on American magazines. The circulation exceeded 200,000 copies. Thanks to art photographs, he became a trendsetter in 1920-1930, so in May 1929 the then-unknown actress Marlene Dietrich became the cover girl, many German magazines of that time, such as UHU , Revue des Monats, and Wiener Magazin ”and others.

Although the magazine was adapted to the requirements of the Nazis (as in the October 1933 issue, the magazine advocated a portrait of Adolf Hitler in every house: “ Every German must have this picture! ”), But in July 1941 it was forcibly closed “to free people and material resources for other war-important goals. ” In total, 203 issues of the magazine were published.

After the war, in 1949, Koeburn and Miketa tried to revive the magazine in Stuttgart , Germany , but only 13 issues were published, after which it was closed for financial reasons.

However, the history of the GDR journal and its relationship with the Köburn magazine are questioned - apart from the title and partly topics, neither legal succession, nor journalistic staff or editorial policy, the journal based in the GDR is not connected with it, about the existence of Köburn magazine on the pages of the GDR magazine It was mentioned only at the end of the 80s, the publishing house’s tradition of conducting history since 1924 arose in the 90s.

GDR Das Magazin

After the events of 1953 , the High Commissioner of the USSR in the GDR V.S. Semyonov summoned the editors-in-chief of the GDR magazines and newspapers to the meeting, as well as the editor-in-chief of the New Berlin publishing house and criticized them for their boring and unoccupied press; as a result, measures were taken - this is how the entertainment magazine Das Magazin and the satirical Ulenspiegel appeared . ^[2]

The first issue of the magazine was published July 17, 1954 in the East German capital of East Germany at the New Berlin Publishing House.

The first editor was Heinz Schmidt , but five years later he was replaced by Hilda Aisler , who led the magazine for the next 20 years, in 1979-1991, Manfred Gebhardt was the editor.

I did not belong to the category of "thick" magazines - the volume did not exceed 80 pages. In content: a mixture of literature, reporting, feuilleton and satire, reviews, including music. The pages of the magazine were decorated with drawings, caricatures and photographs.

The magazine was not censored, unlike, for example, the satirical magazine Ulenspiegel , and its numbers were submitted to the Committee on Culture after the release, although internal editorial censorship took place.

In April 1954, just four months after the launch of the magazine, the publisher wrote a letter to the Ministry of Culture of the GDR with a request to double the circulation to 300,000 copies.

Ten years later, the circulation reached 425,000 copies.

Classified as the main product of socialist cultural production, which should be accessible to workers at an affordable price, the magazine was heavily subsidized by the state, which did not allow the publication of the necessary print runs and affected the availability of the magazine. Also, the reason for the limited circulation was also an acute shortage of paper in the GDR, it was not enough even for party publications. The magazine quickly became a collectible. The 20th anniversary of the magazine in 1974 was marked with the heading " 20 years in short supply ."

In 1981, the circulation of the magazine reached its highest point of 569,000 copies, becoming the most popular magazine in the GDR - for comparison, the Ulenspiegel magazine had a circulation of 481,000 copies, and the official organ of the SED was Neues Deutschland , with a circulation of 1 , 1 million copies. ^[3]

After 1990

In 1990, the magazine began to belong to the publishing house " G + J ", the concept was changed - erotic images became more aggressive, which, contrary to expectations, resulted in a decrease in circulation.

The editors partially returned to the proven concept, but the magazine could not reach its former popularity, changed its publisher several times, went through bankruptcy in 2001, however, remained on the market - one of the few editions of the German Democratic Republic that survived the 1990s.

In 2014, the circulation was 45,000 copies, 75% of the circulation continued to go to East Germany .

Already in the first issue of the magazine appeared a photograph of a naked model, but so far hidden behind corrugated glass ^[2] , in the future the published photographs became more frank.

Das Magazin was very popular not only in the homeland, but also in other countries of the socialist community. The secret of his popularity was that excellent nudity pictures were printed on his pages. It was a kind of lite version of Playboy magazine. ^[four]

It is known that the magazine studied Western trends, the editors had a subscription to the Playboy magazine.

In 1959, the Austrian Interior Ministry saw the “provocative position of the legs” of the model in a photograph in a magazine and banned the sale of a youth magazine, as “there is a danger of irritation of lust.” ^[2]

At the same time, the magazine was never a monopoly in the German Democratic Republic on publishing “ nudes ”, similar pictures were in other magazines, and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in the early 80s, the SED Central Committee’s political bureau adopted a special closed resolution to apply countermeasures to spread Western ideology, recommending the publication of nudity in each illustrated magazine: Neue Berliner Illustrierte , Freie Welt et al. ^[5]

If for a long time the photographs of “nudes” placed in the magazine were made in a “natural” manner, without jewelry, accessories and complex hairstyles for models, with a minimum of makeup, which made them different from the Western style, in the 1980s they became frankly sexy . ^[6]

Unlike the USSR , in the socialist GDR there was erotica permitted by censorship. Models, however, were forbidden to look defiantly sexy - no catchy makeup, artificially enlarged breasts, and so on. It was believed that the heroines of “Das Magazin” symbolize the beauty, freedom and self-confidence of a happy socialist German.

- ^[7]

When Western pornography began to replace “eastern” eroticism in the late 1980s, some Germans claimed that they liked the “clean” Das Magazin models more than vulgar West German porn actresses. ^[7]

In the 2000s, the magazine in Germany became part of the nostalgia for life in the GDR , for which it was criticized, as the “ Deutsche Welle ” in 2003 wrote about the magazine: “once created as an alibi for the GDR authorities, which, shocking this small-circulation socialist“ playboy ", they could say: look what freedom we have - that’s eroticism." ^[8]

It is worth noting that it is difficult to call a small-circulation magazine: at the beginning of the 1980s, the magazine had the largest circulation among GDR magazines, and with a circulation of 569,000 copies. in 1981, with a population of the GDR of 16 million people, the magazine in the GDR is comparable in number of copies per capita to the Playboy magazine in the United States, which had a circulation of 7 million copies. with a US population of 226 million. The shortage of the magazine in the GDR is due to the fact that it was the only erotic magazine in the country.

For 20 years, in 1959-1979 - the heyday of the magazine, its chief editor was Hilda Aisler .

The magazine published Arnold Zweig , Krista Wolf , Anna Zegers and other famous gunners.

Among the photographers who worked in the magazine: Sibylla Bergeman (she worked in the editorial office in 1965-1967, her first pictures were published in the magazine), Arno Fisher , David Hamilton , Miroslav Tikhiy .

For many years, the artist Werner Klemke was engaged in illustration of the cover: from 1955 to 1991 he designed 423 covers - a unique case in the history of German press.

• Werner Klemke introduced one feature of the magazine cover - on it, if you look closely, you can always find an image ... a kitten. As journalist Tatyana Tess noted on the pages of Izvestia’s Moscow: “ This sly kitten, small as a black blot, is deftly hiding in the drawing, and readers are looking for it with constant eagerness .”
• In 1964, the magazine wrote about the Beatles , at the very beginning of Beatlemania, even before the band toured the US ^[2] .
• Photographer Helmut Newton , one of the most important photographers of Vogue magazine, known for his work in the nude genre , the author of the phrase “Sex sells”, wrote in his autobiography that the first acquaintance with the photo “nude” for him happened at the age of six, from the Das Magazin magazines lying in the father’s desk: “ There was a section with beautiful naked models ” ^[9] .

• Das Magazin // DDR-Lexikon
• History of the magazine , the official website of the magazine "Das Magazin"
• Christoph Gunkel - Magazine in der DDR "Einzig amtlich zugelassene Nackte der Republik" // Der Spiegel , May 27, 2015