Publishing Houses and Publishers

Born on 5 November 1923 in Hannover as the sixth of seven children, Rudolf Karl Augstein grew up in upper-class surroundings. He was nine when the National socialists seized power and his first publication was a letter to the editor of Goebbels' journal Das Reich which alarmed his teachers of the then 16-year-old pupil greatly. Only a few months after he had begun to work as an intern at the "Hannoverscher Anzeiger" he was called up for national service and sent to the frontline in the East as an artillery observer. The "Anzeiger" ceased publication in March 1943. Augstein then matriculated in the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Göttingen in the field of journalism.

Deemed "politically clean" by the British, he became a member of the editing staff of the Hannoversches Nachrichtenblatt of the Allied Military Government in 1945. In 1946 he took charge of the department dealing with Germany of the news magazine Diese Woche (i. e. this week). The following year he took over the magazine on a licence from the British military and gave it a new name – this was the birth of the Spiegel, from now on a platform for politicians and artists. At the time, Augstein was only 23 years old. How fearless and uncompromising his methods were – even vis-à-vis himself – is shown by the fact that he even allowed a tough review of the premiere of his own theatre play to be printed by his own house.

The Spiegel moved to Hamburg in 1952. Augstein carried on a campaign against the "Westpolitik" (i. e. policy towards the West) of Konrad Adenauer under the pen name of Jens Daniel. He was afraid that the Chancellor would ruin all chances of reunification. "How is the split through the world to be overcome if the Germans allow the cut to go directly through our hearts and tongues?" (quoted according to Merseburger). The whole thing escalated as the "Spiegel Affair": on 26 October 1962, shortly after 9 pm, the officers of the Bonn security group of the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt) stormed the Hamburg press office and searched 170 rooms, located over seven floors. Seven editors were arrested. Conrad Ahlers, the author of the article Bedingt abwehrbereit (i. e. only partially ready to defend) who had been critical of the defence concept of the Federal Republic and had thus triggered the search, was sent to prison for 56 days. Rudolf Augstein was accused of treason and was gaoled for 104 days. The lawsuit against Augstein was not finally closed until 1965. Defence Minister Franz Josef Strauss resigned because of the affair, while the "Spiegel" emerged from it with increased power, influence and circulation. "I think a passionate journalist can hardly write an article without subconsciously wanting to change reality," Augstein said. His interview with the philosopher Martin Heidegger is also legendary: the photo showing them walking along a mountain path together is not only a piece of media history – it is also a chronicle of history.

After the political scandal, Augstein sought new tasks. A father of four children, he nevertheless seldom found time for the family – and probably didn't really try to. Most of his efforts to take over newspapers and journals or to found new ones failed. Again and again he attempted to go beyond the Spiegel but was continually cast back; only the Manager Magazin, founded in 1971, still exists today. His life vacillated between triumph and defeat. In 1953 he risked an excursion into the history of religion with a book about Jesus, but criticism was caustic. What hurt him most was the jeering of the cosmopolitan Jesuit Karl Rahner about the "avalanche of semi-scholarship". In 1968 he published Preußens Friedrich und die Deutschen (i. e. Prussia's Friedrich and the Germans) – a bestseller. This was followed by an excursion onto the political stage: in 1972 he got into parliament via the federal state list of the Free Democrats (Landesliste der Freien Demokratischen Partei (FDP) ) but already resigned from his seat ten weeks later. One of the reasons for the shortness of this episode was that Augstein realized that he could be politically more influential via the Spiegel – the pioneer of German investigative journalism – than he could be in parliament. In 1973 he introduced a participation model to the publishing house that turned staff into co-owners. Thanks to this gift, his staff now owned twice as many shares as he did. In the later years of his life he called this decision "the greatest mistake of his life" (Merseburger).

In 1995, at the age of 72 years, Augstein retired from the day-to-day business despite the pressure that new news magazines like Focus exerted. The bon vivant who had been married five times died on 7 November 2002, shortly after his 79th birthday, as a result of pneumonia. "He was there and stayed – until the very last day. He remained the soul of the 'enlightenment company' that the Spiegel represented and indeed still represents, and he was not the person to see the magazine as a political battle tool", the then editor-in-chief Stefan Aust wrote in the Spiegel 46/2002.

Augstein was buried on Sylt. According to the Spiegel there are no plans to fill the position of publisher.