SPIEGEL cover for the anniversary: ​​The best cover pictures from 75 years

1/30

SPIEGEL 36/1949:

The SPIEGEL title characters had not been allowed to break through the orange bar at the top since mid-1947 - a principle that was only abandoned in early 1949.

In the September 1, 1949 issue, the SPIEGEL cover became a goal;

the editorial team left no doubt that it would stay clean: "THE HERO THAT HOLDS - No penalty in Moro's goal," was written under this picture.

It was about the Italian national

.

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

Enlarge image

2/30

SPIEGEL 11/1952:

Would you have recognized him?

"Called plum pudding," wrote DER SPIEGEL under this portrait of the then three-year-old British Prince

, who had become heir to the throne when his mother Elizabeth II ascended to the throne.

“Modern sociologists,” the cover story said, “have long realized that there is no better remedy for the rampant dullness and boredom of peoples than chubby princes and princesses.” Charles's grandchildren have now fulfilled this role.

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

3/30

MIRROR 50/1956:

Elvis, the Pelvis.

DER SPIEGEL reported on a night in New York's Times Square: There »three thousand crying flappers wallowed.

They were the registered members of a new association devoted to the unconditional worship of a new god of adolescents: They were the members of the

. ”They had tickets to the premiere of the Elvis film all night »Love Me Tender« was pending.

The star, as DER SPIEGEL explained to its readers, could not even play the guitar flawlessly and would sing in a "grotesquely modified rock 'n' roll rhythm."

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

4/30

MIRROR 1/1957:

A traditional Bavarian hat becomes a Bundeswehr helmet, it hovers over the neatly parted hairstyle of

(CSU), who was promoted to Minister of Defense in October 1956. A portrait of Strauss by the legendary illustrator Boris Artzybasheff, who had also made the title for "Time Magazine". Under the headline "Der Primus", SPIEGEL described Strauss in its cover story as courageous and sometimes a little too brash. Among other things, he is quoted with the sentence: "We Germans may have lost the war, but not our brains."

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

5/30

SPIEGEL 50/1958:

A cover picture that does not require any text - that only happened twice in 75 years of SPIEGEL: in 1963 for the assassination attempt on John F.Kennedy and five years earlier on this cover.

The sketched

, the outline of a city through which a dividing line runs from north to south-east - even today everyone recognizes at first glance what it is about.

The reason for the cover story about Berlin in December 1958 was the fact that the Soviet Union "laid hands on Berlin a second time" after the blockade of the western sectors in 1948.

Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev had unilaterally revoked the four-power status, apparently with the aim of adding Berlin to the GDR.

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

6/30

SPIEGEL 9/1961:

A portrait of the actor

: "Nikolaus Nakszynski is the real name of a 34-year-old reciter who calls himself Klaus Kinski," wrote SPIEGEL in February 1961. "With his rhetorical verve, but even more with his exhibitionistic jugglery, he got off Season after season, he attracted large numbers of people in need of entertainment to his one-man show. «Up until then he had preferred to recite François Villon;

Now he announced that he wanted to speak "the good Lord" and to throw extracts from the New Testament "like lightning bolts and clubs among the masses."

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

Enlarge image

7/30

SPIEGEL 45/1962:

One of the most famous cover pictures in the history of SPIEGEL shows publisher

when he was arrested on October 28, 1962. SPIEGEL was accused of committing "treason" with the cover story "Conditionally ready for defense" about the inadequate supply of Bundeswehr troops in the NATO association to have.

The action taken by the judiciary against the editors went down in history as the "SPIEGEL affair".

Even then, the Swedish newspaper "Dagens Nyheter" wrote: "There are reasons to see the action, at least in part, as a kind of legal blood revenge on a press organ that is uncomfortable and disruptive from a political point of view."

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

8/30

SPIEGEL 51/1967:

"The pale forehead fluttered by night-black forehead, the chin shaded by stubble, the dark eyes under bushy browbones ecstatically aflame, the mouth cut deep into the gaunt cheeks torn open with strained articulation" - this is how SPIEGEL described the student leader

at the end of 1967 , a few Months before the attack on him.

»What Dutschke thinks is 'revolution', 'counterrevolution', 'obstruction', 'production', 'reproduction', 'subsumption', 'integration', 'transformation', 'abstraction', 'repression', 'manifestation', ›Manipulation‹ «, it said in the cover story:» Hardly anyone understands it, but the republic speaks of him. «

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

Enlarge image

9/30

SPIEGEL 25/1970:

In the summer of 1970, the year after Woodstock, Altamont and Bob Dylan's appearance on the Isle of Wight, SPIEGEL couldn't get past the

either - and started its tutoring session with a quote about the Pied Piper of Hameln.

Pete Townshend from The Who, who had already caused a sensation with their rock opera "Tommy", was interviewed by SPIEGEL.

When asked: "How do you think musicologists will assess rock music 100 years from now?", Townshend replied, then 25: "I am only interested in the present."

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

Enlarge image

10/30

SPIEGEL 51/1970:

Journalists not only in Germany quickly realized that

at the memorial for the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto on December 7, 1970 is an image for the history books.

“Was Brandt allowed to kneel?” Just a week later, SPIEGEL published a survey: According to this, 41 percent of German citizens considered the Chancellor's gesture to be “appropriate” and 48 percent for “exaggerated”.

Brandt himself commented on his motive in the SPIEGEL interview: »I wanted to apologize on behalf of our people for a millionfold crime that was committed in the abused German name.

This is part of the process if we want to make a new beginning and exclude a repetition of the horrors of the past. "

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

11/30

SPIEGEL 35/1976:

Helmut Kohl

doesn't speak to SPIEGEL?

That was not the case in 1976.

Kohl wanted to become Federal Chancellor and ran as a CDU candidate against Helmut Schmidt.

SPIEGEL editor Klaus Wirtgen and editor-in-chief Erich Böhme met Kohl at Lake Wolfgang.

Among other things, they confronted him with his lack of experience in federal and foreign policy.

Kohl referred to his good poll results and replied: "I am happy to take on the global citizens currently residing in Bonn."

The cover picture, which shows Kohl with an unmistakably pear-shaped skull, was drawn by caricaturist Jean Mulatier.

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

Enlarge image

12/30

SPIEGEL 31/1977:

A title that caused a stir in the summer of 1977 - especially in

, of course.

Italian daily newspapers printed the cover picture and commented insulted: "Once again the Italian situation is presented as worse than it is in reality," wrote "Il Tempo", for example.

The "Corriere della Sera" asked: "Why are the German tourists still coming en masse?" - and pointedly remarked: "The spaghetti are cooked too soft." That too.

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

Enlarge image

13/30

SPIEGEL 33/1986:

This cover really came out in 1986. Because at that time the German Physical Society warned for the first time about the greenhouse effect: CO₂ heats the atmosphere, an increase in temperature on earth by three to nine (!) Degrees is to be feared. Part of the ice on the polar caps will melt and cause sea levels to rise. The SPIEGEL, as science editor Johann Grolle noted 30 years later, “took this prognosis as an opportunity to put

on its cover, which would attract the public

to put under water «.

The story then begins with a fictional scene from the summer of 2040: Hamburg and Hong Kong, London, Cairo and New York have long been "swallowed up by the sea", Great Britain has "disintegrated into an archipelago".

It will hardly get that far by 2040 - but without such horror scenarios, the rethinking of climate change in politics and society might have been a long time coming.

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

Enlarge image

14/30

SPIEGEL 41/1989:

During the turning point of 1989, SPIEGEL dedicated a dozen titles to the GDR and its residents.

"Reunification dreams" were also discussed in September.

However, on the 40th anniversary of the GDR on October 7, SPIEGEL painted a gloomy picture.

The cover story of the

said: “The mood in the GDR is worse than ever in the 40-year history of the state.

The SED leadership, protected by the people by a huge police force, but celebrated as if nothing had happened. «A month later, the wall fell - which, of course, was also a SPIEGEL title.

Photo: Schwarzdesign / DER SPIEGEL

15/30

SPIEGEL 9/1991:

The face of war: Iraq's dictator

as a collage of a rubble house and his typical Barrett - an award-winning SPIEGEL cover picture.

The Second Gulf War entered a decisive phase in February 1991, the Soviet Union proposed a ceasefire on February 22nd, and the USA demanded the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait within a day.

When that did not happen, the US began the ground war against Iraq.

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

16/30

SPIEGEL 11/1996:

On March 11, 1996, the SPIEGEL editorial team wrote proudly, but also a little bit distantly, in the in-house communication on the cover story about the

: “In October 1994, SPIEGEL was the world's first news magazine, just before American Time, to offer editorial content on the› Internet ‹ to that electronic cosmos that is said to be the realm of the future. "And further:" Whether the earth-spanning network one day leads to a playground for capitalism or the arena of ideal democracy, whether it suffocates from the abundance of information or at least becomes everyone's favorite - there is still a dispute about it. ”To this day.

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

17/30

SPIEGEL 43/1998:

The

rises over Berlin - after 16 years of Kohl, the SPD and the Greens had a majority in the federal election on September 27, 1998, a time of new beginnings and many unanswered questions.

Even before Chancellor Gerhard Schröder took office officially, SPIEGEL looked at the plans of the new government coalition and, with typical SPIEGEL skepticism, came to the conclusion: "quite smooth, but also rather lackluster."

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

Enlarge image

18/30

SPIEGEL 43/2001:

The twin towers of the

in New York, which collapsed after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, featured on the SPIEGEL cover - three times in 2001 alone. Photographer Frank Schwere later said of this picture in a SPIEGEL interview: "When I took the photo, I knew it was going to be an icon." The title, six weeks after the attacks, showed the catastrophe from a different perspective, closer. “It is a deep wound that the world metropolis suffered on September 11th. There are still clouds of gray smoke over the mountain that was once the World Trade Center, ”the reporters wrote. “But the vast wasteland on the southern tip of New York is not just a place of devastation; it is also a symbol of the will to survive of the city and thus of the whole nation. «In October 2001, she faced a new challenge:The "anthrax letters," envelopes containing highly dangerous anthrax spores, triggered a new wave of horrors.

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

19/30

SPIEGEL 47/2004:

An insight into the life of

from strictly conservative families.

The girls just want, as the cover story said, »what their German friends are allowed to do: sometimes go to the cinema, sometimes eat ice cream, sometimes talk to boys.

Just talk.

For these teenage dreams, they had to break with their families, go underground, change names and forge passports.

They represent a generation of immigrant children who fight the clash of cultures in front of the closet and in the living room.

Every pair of jeans is a stage win, and those who are not married against their will are victorious, somewhere back there, far, in Turkey.

It's an uprising against the parents. "

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

20/30

SPIEGEL 26/2006:

The SPIEGEL was sharply criticized for the title »Onslaught of the Poor« in the fall of 1991, which worked with a clichéd »The boat is full« symbolism.

Fifteen years later, the title again

- but this time the perspective was reversed: The cover story was not about the alleged threat to European prosperity, but about the motives of those who set out for the promised land did.

The Ghanaian John Ekow Ampan, who embarked on a four-year odyssey to get to Europe, represented the (then) around 190 million migrants on earth.

Klaus Brinkbäumer, then a reporter and later SPIEGEL editor-in-chief, spent seven weeks tracing Ampan's path.

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

Enlarge image

21/30

SPIEGEL 47/2008:

On the American one-dollar bill, anyone who has ever held one will know that

was the first President of the United States.

This is also the case in a modified form on the SPIEGEL cover of this 2008 issue. The graphic illustrates a brutal attack on the dollar and thus on the global economy, which led to the great financial crisis.

In the cover story, SPIEGEL reconstructed "how the world could be brought to the brink of ruin": a capital crime, "committed by bankers, tolerated by politicians".

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

Enlarge image

22/30

SPIEGEL 35/2011:

Vicco von Bülow

aka Loriot was the man who taught Germans to laugh at themselves. And in his work he was considered a perfectionist who let his scene shoot until every detail was right. With this title, DER SPIEGEL bowed when the great humorist died in 2011 at the age of 87. The cover story read that he had »long ago smiled so deeply into people's hearts that he was eternal in his lifetime«: »It has to do with slowness, accuracy and timing, with great affection for his creatures, with precision and a rare gift for observation, but also with a passion for nonsense and a deep love for the German language. Anyone who comes up with a dish called ›Kosakenzipfel‹ or a name like Hallmackenreuter is a true man of letters. Anyone who invents the 'clamping sleeve suspension'knows about the absurd elegance of German technocrats' speech. "

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

23/30

MIRROR 46/2016:

Donald Trump

is racing towards earth like a meteorite.

It is still unclear how much damage it will take in the process;

the picture line alludes to one of the most famous songs by the band REM: "It's the end of the world as We Know It".

The cover picture for the November 12, 2016 issue was created by Edel Rodriguez.

Not everyone agreed with the meteorite Trump;

one reader wrote that SPIEGEL would give "growing catastrophism" another boost.

As editor-in-chief, Klaus Brinkbäumer replied: "The fact that cover illustrations, like other caricatures, bring statements to the point or even sharpen things, is not only legitimate, but also imperative." Hamburg-based New Business Verlag chose the meteorite as "Cover of the Year": »The only cover with relevance and artistic claim.«

Photo:

THE MIRROR

Enlarge image

24/30

SPIEGEL 20/2018:

No US president polarized anymore - SPIEGEL has often made

the title figure in recent years, often drawn by the New York artist Edel Rodriguez.

The graphic artist and caricaturist also designed the hotly debated cover drawing of the American President, with the statue of liberty decapitated (issue 6/2017), and here Trump's middle finger announcement to Europe.

Time and again, these titles have been controversial, but some are considered icons.

Photo: DER SPIEGEL

Enlarge image

25/30

SPIEGEL 35/2018:

In 2018, DER SPIEGEL described the handling of global migration movements as an explosive "question of the century" and Europe's asylum policy as "without a plan or understanding";

it is driving more and more voters to radical parties.

Two title authors were looking for a humane solution that would be accepted by the citizens - "a plea for a new, better refugee and migration policy" in ten proposals ranging from more local help to an immigration law for Germany.

Enlarge image

26/30

SPIEGEL 52/2018:

“The worst thing that can happen to an editorial team has happened to us,” SPIEGEL wrote in an in-house announcement at the end of 2018. “For years, we had reports and other texts in the paper that did not depict reality, but were in part made up.

Our colleague

did not rely on research, but used his imagination, came up with quotes, scenes, people in order to make many of his stories appear better and more exciting. «For years the reporter had falsified articles in whole or in part, which ended up taking too long through and triggered a serious crisis.

How it came about, how the manipulations were uncovered, how the editors changed their processes and controls: SPIEGEL itself said what is - in the cover story about the "nightmare" of this fraud case, in other publications and in the final report of the investigation commission at the end of May 2019 .

Enlarge image

27/30

SPIEGEL 42/2019:

After a right-wing extremist killed the Kassel government president in June 2019, the attack on a synagogue in Halle shook Germany four months later and outraged the world.

It was Yom Kippur, the festival of reconciliation, the highest holiday for the Jews.

On that day, the assassin wanted to kill Jews, had prepared his act for a long time and radicalized himself in the parallel world of right-wing extremist Internet forums.

The massive wooden door prevented a massacre in the synagogue;

the perpetrator first murdered a passer-by, then a construction worker in a kebab shop.

DER SPIEGEL reconstructed the act and also described "the hatred of Jews, the new old anti-Semitism that is almost everyday again in Germany."

Photo: cgs

Enlarge image

28/30

SPIEGEL 14/2020:

When the Corona crisis really started in March 2020, SPIEGEL dedicated nine titles in a row to the pandemic and its consequences, here with a barrier tape.

A team in Tyrol researched how the winter sports resort Ischgl could become a virus breeding ground.

And in the cover story, the editorial team tried to find answers to questions that concern us to this day and more than ever: How long can we take it?

How do you weigh up between infection rates and basic rights?

How long can democracies restrict people's freedom?

And above all: How do we get out of there?

Photo: cgs

Enlarge image

29/30

SPIEGEL 36/2021:

A simple word can have several meanings.

“Done,” was the headline in SPIEGEL at the beginning of September, when the end of

approached.

She had survived 16 years as Chancellor, as did the Federal Republic of Germany, and of course "Done" also alludes to Merkel's sentence "We can do it", which she said in 2015 in the debate about Germany's migration policy.

"That was the tipping point for Merkel's chancellorship," wrote SPIEGEL and drew a balance sheet in seven chapters, on seven disasters or crises that shaped her term of office: from the financial market and euro crises to climate change and the corona pandemic - a " Era of missed opportunities «.

Enlarge image

30/30

SPIEGEL 44/2021:

On the occasion of the international climate conference in Glasgow, SPIEGEL shed light on what is probably the greatest crisis of mankind at the moment.

"So that the rich north can live ecologically correct, the poor south is being exploited: Corporations are destroying entire areas in order to extract raw materials for wind turbines and solar cells," says SPIEGEL.

Overexploitation to save the planet - a team of reporters was looking for ways out of the dilemma.