2024-11-01 09:49:00
“New perspectives for a brilliant mind”: this is what the new magazine should have offered to FAZ readers in 1980, according to its own advertising. Under the headline “Our information has become more colorful,” the ad copy announced “food for the head and the senses at the same time.” It wasn’t even exaggerated.
Reactions to the FAZ magazine, which first appeared in the newspaper on March 7, 1980, were always positive. The magazine “showed the existing competition how it should be done in practice”, wrote the media report ”Kressreport” – and praised the photos, layout, colour, typography and text, “consistent down to the last detail “.
At 48 pages, the first issue offered a portrait of the actress Ingrid Caven, a story about Pina Bausch‘s dance theater photographed by Will McBride, a report on a Herrgottsschnitzer in Poland – and a text on how starfighter pilots date the ejection seat when they have problems. Editor-in-chief Thomas Schröder called his program “high-class entertainment”. Two decades began in which the paper included a stock exchange every Friday. The intelligent head’s eyes overflowed every time.
Golden times of analog
It was a good time for print products. The circulation of the newspaper was growing, the Internet was not yet eating up advertising revenue and, thanks to the magazine, more and more readers were buying the newspaper on Fridays. The time was ripe for “a supplement that lives on images and color without being an illustrated sheet”, as the publisher’s advertising stated.
In 1970 the «Zeit-Magazin» was launched on the market, followed in 1990 by the «Süddeutsche Magazin». Four-color printing did not yet exist in newspapers and in the new millennium color photos were used only in the editorial section. The magazine stood out for its color images. The publisher hoped to generate revenue from advertising for “representative product launches, high-quality branded items, colorful corporate identity campaigns and international campaigns.”
The supplement has earned a good reputation due to its design. Editor-in-chief Thomas Schröder called Willy Fleckhaus as artistic director. In 1959 Fleckhaus founded the magazine “twen”, progressive in content and form. He then became known for designing the rainbow-colored Suhrkamp edition, the series of paperbacks with 48 cover colors that repeated year after year.
A breath of fresh air in magazine design
In the obituary of Fleckhaus, who died in 1983 at just 58 years of age, Schröder writes emphatically of the magazine’s designer: “In the insistence on moderation, in the formulation of a valid graphic canon, in the never corrupted truthfulness of his research, the compressed expression, the request of a spiritual order is decided, a manifesto against the destructive is decided and, the celebration of beauty is decided.
For editors who moved from newspaper to magazine, the predominance of design was unusual: “For example, the length of the headlines was dictated by the layout,” says Josef Oehrlein, who has worked at the magazine since 1986. “The layout was key. We had to get used to it.” Titles became design elements, typography became independent, but despite all the fantastic ideas, the layout ultimately remained minimalist.
Design methods migrated to the Sunday newspaper
The uniform design of the title also impressed the magazine’s design experts. A black background was the passe-partout on which the photos and illustrations stood out with style. The magazine branch took over the Fraktur font from the newspaper’s parent company, but due to the background it was reversed, i.e. white on black.
The word “Magazine” appeared in one color from the cover illustration. This already anticipated the many correspondences, which seemed to be a constant dialogue between graphics, images and text of the magazine. Design expert Hans-Michael Koetzle writes that Fleckhaus “positioned the photos like a sleepwalker.”
The magazine has also taken new paths in terms of content. Until then, large portraits of entrepreneurs, artists and opera stars almost never appeared in newspapers. Verbatim interviews were also largely absent until the early 21st century. For the paper, analytical background was more important than realistic reporting. And in the classic departments of the FAZ there was little space for the beautiful themes of life.
The magazine was the ideal place for all this. Whether it is a great portrait of the actor Yves Montand (1982), whether it is fantastic images of the Grand Canyon by Martin Pudenz (1994), whether it is elaborate reportages from Russia, Costa Rica, the United States or Japan – the magazine made this possible with legendary photographers such as Stephan Erfurt, Abe Frajndlich, Wilfried Bauer, Barbara Klemm and Serge Cohen.
media1.faz.net/ppmedia/w1240/aktuell/335659329/1.10044693/original_aspect_ratio/ab-in-den-sueden-das-titelbild.jpg” title=”Heading south: A 1997 magazine cover featured German holidaymakers in Italy.” width=”951″ class=”body-elements__image–medium” data-v-023a27d4=””/>Heading south: A 1997 magazine cover featured German holidaymakers in Italy.FAZ archive
Plus the columns. Johannes Gross’s “Notebook” was a treasure trove of aphorisms (“Impotence shines through in curses”). Horst-Dieter Ebert’s “World of Commodities” has turned into ironic comments on the present. Horst Dohm’s wine column “Bottle Post” was – like much of the magazine – a declaration of love for Italy. The director Udo Pini has posed a mystery (and continues to do so in the Sunday newspaper since 2003). Roswin Finkenzeller wrote the subtle chess column, which remained in the paper until 2021, that is, it appeared week after week for 41 years.
Advertising revenue is lost
The closure of the magazine - the last issue was published on June 25, 1999 - came as a surprise to readers. But the crisis had already become evident. The «Zeit-Magazin» also temporarily ceased publication in 1999. The newspaper rotary press was now also capable of high-quality color printing; Many advertisers who had desired the four-color magazine two decades earlier now advertised in the paper.
This led to a dramatic decline in advertising in the magazine. Retaining him was no longer justifiable in a media company that has to earn its own money. It was with a heavy heart that the magazine was discontinued. Number 1008 was the last.
After a few years, the editors and publishers again felt the desire to develop a supplement. In the editorial team, because in the FAZ many topics related to fashion, design, society and pop culture were neglected, even if they occupied more and more space in the eyes of the public. In publishing because the constant growth of the luxury sector has brought with it hopes in the advertising of automotive, fashion, watch, jewellery, design and beauty companies.
Then in 2013 the restart
Since 2006 “Welt am Sonntag” has published the luxury supplement “Icon”, ”Zeit-Magazin” returned in 2007 and ”Neue Zürcher Zeitung” founded ”Z”. Magazines like “T” of the “New York Times” or “M” of “Le Monde” have inaugurated a great new era of supplements on an international level.
In February 2013, the new FAZ magazine was released in large format. It is published in the newspaper once a month, on the second Saturday of each month and in some special editions every year. With “magazin” written in lowercase in the title header, it pays homage to its larger predecessor. The new magazine couldn’t pick up where the old one left off. Because reports, portraits and direct interviews can now also be read in newspapers. So questions of style and life take up more space in the FAZ magazine than before.
The first issue featured Jessica Joffe, the protagonist of the fashion series, on the cover. Karl Lagerfeld designed the first of his “carlicatures”, which he delivered monthly until his death in 2019: the symbolic figures Marianne and Germania hand in hand, programmatically under the title “A modern wedding”. Fashion in general: Stylist Markus Ebner creates most of his photo series from Paris, featuring protagonists such as Mario Götze, Diane Kruger, Marteria, Lena Meyer-Landrut and Toni Garrn.
Unlike the old magazine, which was a separate department opposite the FAZ headquarters in Frankfurt’s Gallus, the new edition is created in the newspaper’s editorial office and makes use of the generous resources of authors, photographers, designers and ideas. Editors and correspondents from all sectors such as Peter-Philipp Schmitt, Bernd Steinle, Jennifer Wiebking, Johanna Christner, Melanie Mühl, Johanna Kuroczik, Daniel Deckers, Peter Badenhop, Leonie Feuerbach, Stephan Löwenstein and Reiner Burger contribute to an issue that contains many new features prospects for the intelligent head.
Washington correspondent Andreas Ross took a large portrait of the White House photographer, Paris correspondent Michaela Wiegel explained her city before the Olympic Games and Munich correspondent Timo Frasch conducted extensive interviews with celebrities such as Harald Schmidt, Alice Schwarzer and Elyas M’Barek and Gloria von Thurn und Taxis.
The previous issue has not been forgotten. The first artistic director of the new magazine was the last of the old one: Peter Breul. In some details he referred to the Fleckhaus creations. Even today, an object that refers to a topic of the magazine is shown in its original size on the editorial page. The horizontal lines with which Fleckhaus divided the titles of the books of the Suhrkamp Edition separate the topics on the summary page. Oversized or compressed titles are also a reminder of the past. Despite all the innovations, tradition should always surprise the reader.