Newspapers and Magazines

Buenos Aires, Moscow, Windhoek: German-language newspapers are to be found all over the world - they are however a dying breed.

When, in the past, Germans emigrated to a new country that did not have any German-language newspapers, they simply set up their own. This is how it came about that so many foreign media came into being all over the world in places ranging from Buenos Aires to Windhoek. An organisation called Internationale Medienhilfe (International Media Assistance) has calculated that there are about 3,000 German-language news publications, 300 radio stations and 50 TV stations all located outside Germany, Austria and Switzerland – they not only report for the expatriate communities abroad, but also for tourists and locals who would like to learn German.

Many of the 3,000 publications however are community news sheets, tourism magazines or merely annual publications. Daily or weekly newspapers consisting of several pages that adhere to journalistic standards and appeal to a large readership are in fact quite rare.

News from Namibia

In Namibia that is home to about 22,000 German-speaking Namibians and where many locals learn German as a foreign language prides itself in its Allgemeine Zeitung (AZ) – a 12- to 34-page newspaper that reports on both Namibian and African affairs, for example, irregularities during the national elections, antelope poaching or a German cyclist who crossed the desert. It is the oldest newspaper in the former German colony and was first published in 1916. With a daily circulation of 5,000 to 6,000 the AZ is one of the country’s largest dailies.

It has a further 1,500 online readers who log in daily to the website’s news pages, reports and tourist dossiers; there are even readers logging in from beyond the country’s borders. It has an online column called “EES ganz privat” whose aim is to get younger readers interested in the AZ again – it is written by a 27-year-old German-Namibian rapper called Eric “EES” Sell in “Nämslang”, a wild concoction of German, English and African languages, in which he tells of his experiences in Germany.

Getting younger people to read their newspapers is a major problem for many foreign or expatriate newspapers, because with every new generation the link to the German homeland and the German language fades even more into the background. The young people use the media available in the country of their birth and, more often than not, get their information and news from the internet.

Threatened with extinction

The Israel-Nachrichten, so steeped in tradition, was one of Israel’s biggest newspapers in the 1950s, but at the beginning of 2011 economic factors forced it out of business. The paper has appeared on and off under different names in Tel Aviv since 1938 and was above all read by German Jews who poured into Israel in their thousands at the beginning of the 20th century. Many of them did not understand Hebrew – so they resorted to reading the German daily. Jewish intellectuals, like the authors Max Brod and Arnold Zweig, contributed articles as guest authors. Nevertheless there was a gradual dying out of the “Jekkes” – Jews who had immigrated from Germany - and this led to a dwindling of the paper’s circulation.

In Buenos Aires the Argentinisches Tageblatt (AT) has suffered the same fate over the last few decades, its circulation dropping from 50,000 to under 10,000 at present. Since the beginning of the 1980s the paper has only been published on a weekly basis. For a long time it was an important forum for emigrants who were against national socialism and since the 18th century it had been at journalistic loggerheads with the right-wing, conservative Deutsche La Plata Zeitung. Whereas the national-socialist La Plata was banned in 1944, the AT has now reached the ripe, old age of 120.

Crocodile hunters with an immigrant background

In Argentina’s neighbouring country, Chile, the German-Chilean Union has been publishing its weekly paper, Cóndor, since 1938. Over its 16 pages the reader can enjoy news reports from Chile, Germany and Europe, as well as reports on the lives of and stories about the German community in Chile. A few articles in Spanish are also printed. The newspaper has a present circulation of about 6,000 and that is why it has also brought out a special supplement called Cóndor Junior, whose aim is to playfully stimulate interest in the German language among children and teenagers.

According to publishing statistics in Australia and New Zealand the German newspaper, Die Woche, has a readership of about 30,000. It was founded in 1937 by German immigrant Johann Jakobi from Siebenbürgen and with its 24 pages is actually quite comprehensive in comparison to other German-language papers in other countries. Two-thirds of the content however is supplied by German news agencies, only a few articles on local topics have actually been researched by the paper itself – like the most beautiful German-Australian love stories or a report on a crocodile expert of German-Austrian origins.

Expanding into the Internet

The oldest German-language newspaper comes from Russia – the St. Petersburgische Zeitung that was published between 1727 until 1914. Having been banned since the First World War, it was re-launched in 1991 – as a complimentary monthly publication available in hotels for tourists to read. The Moskauer Deutschen Zeitung came off better – it was published from 1870 until the First World War, was revived in 1998 by the Verband der Deutschen Kultur (Association of German Culture) and now comes out every two weeks with a circulation of 25,000. Eight of its 24 pages are in Russian. In its professionally designed online version that strives to promote a more differentiated view of Russia there is a whole range of self-researched articles on Russian politics, business and culture.

The Internet is becoming more and more important for these German-language newspapers. In 2009, after being in print for 155 years, the Hungarian weekly, Der Pester Lloyd, was on the brink of closing – but the Internet came to the rescue. In its best times the traditional paper had a circulation of 25,000 – now, however, as an online daily it is logged onto by about 150,000 readers.