Der Spiegel

Der Spiegel (German for "The Mirror") is Germany's biggest and most influential weekly magazine, published in Hamburg, with a circulation of around one million per week.

Criticism

One of the main points of criticism that is brought against the Spiegel concerns the language that is cultivated in the magazine. In 1957 the writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger published his essay Die Sprache des Spiegel (?The Language of the Spiegel?), in which he criticised what he called a "pretended objectivity". Wolf Schneider, an eminent journalist and stylist has called the Spiegel "the biggest mangler of the German language" and used quotations from the magazine as examples of bad German for his style guides. Recently the Spiegel has joined the ranks of the language guardians with the "Zwiebelfisch" column on the magazine's website which even spawned a best-selling book.

Related Topics:
1957 - Hans Magnus Enzensberger

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Some critics, in particular the Augstein biographer and former Spiegel writer Otto Köhler, have brought charges against the magazine's dealings with former Nazis, even SS officers. It is alleged that the 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.

Related Topics:
SS - Third Reich

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Politicians who had to deal with the magazine often voiced their disaffection for it. Outspoken conservative Franz Josef Strauß contended that Der Spiegel was "the Gestapo of our time", and Socialist Willy Brandt called it "Scheißblatt", i.e. a "crappy paper".

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