Sports magazine

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The Sport-Illustrierte (spelling: sport-Illustrierte ) was a German sports magazine . It appeared under this name from 1949 to 1973 and from 1978 to 1989 in various publishers and was one of the most widely read sports magazines in Germany.

history

The Sport-Illustrierte was in the tradition of the Deutsche Sport-Illustrierte , which was published between 1933 and 1943 by the Walcker Verlag in Stuttgart. The first issue under the name "Sport-Illustrierte" came on the market after the end of the Second World War in January 1949 and was advertised as a "big [s] monthly magazine for sport and motors". The magazine was initially made up of three members of the editorial staff, led by publisher and editor-in-chief Ernst Hornickel, and it was published at a price of one Deutsche Mark. For a short time (October 1950 to March 1951) the paper returned to the title “Deutsche Sport-Illustrierte” and appeared weekly. Hornickel remained the publisher and editor-in-chief until 1963, followed by Karl-Heinz Huba after a short transition period , under whom the sports magazine changed to a bi-weekly publication cycle.

At the beginning of the 1970s, the magazine was on the verge of bankruptcy with a sold circulation of 80,000 copies. After switching publisher several times, Burda has now secured the rights - in expectation of a sports boom in the face of the Summer Olympics in Munich and the World Cup in Germany. The editor was the show master Wim Thoelke . During this time, the editorial team grew to 28 employees and the magazine was published weekly. In spite of an increased circulation to 165,000 copies - with which it took second place in this category after kicker - it remained uneconomical, Burda stopped the regular publication of the sports magazines in October 1973 and justified this in the last issue with the “explosive cost increases in the paper and printing sector ".

From 1978 onwards, a follow-up publication was published by Stoof-Verlag in Cologne under the same name, which in 1989 merged with Sports International to form the magazine " Sports ". "Sports" was published by the Hamburg publisher Gruner + Jahr until it was discontinued in 1999 .

editorial staff

The editorial staff of the 1960s and 1970s included Horst Vetten and Wolfgang Wünsche , who later wrote for Die Zeit , Helmer Boelsen and the motorsport journalist Olaf von Fersen . From the late 1960s until his accidental death in 1972, Max Mühlberger was a photo reporter for the magazine. In the period from 1949 to 1973 the following men took up the post of editor-in-chief:

Content and criticism

The main focus of the Sport-Illustrierte was not on the reporting of events, but was presented by the first editor-in-chief and publisher Ernst Hornickel as follows: "Our sector within the diverse areas of responsibility of the German sports press should be, outstanding sportsmen and women [sic] to give them a closer look, to assess their chances of international success, to learn their methods, to express their opinion on current problems. ”Due to the depth of the reports, the newspaper received praise from Helmut Schön and Uwe Seeler, among others . In 2016, the sports journalist Harald Pistorius described the Sport-Illustrierte as the best-known title in a series of "magazines [s] that did not write about sport in the form of results and competition reports, but rather defied topicality to provide background information, reports and interviews. "

With the takeover by Burda Verlag, the orientation of the sports magazines changed. Journalists who were not involved in sports were also increasingly writing in the editorial office, which resulted in more factual errors in articles. In addition, at the beginning of the 1970s, the magazine relied in some cases on the sales-increasing effect of nudity - for example with the aid of a report that was supposed to show whether swimmers achieve faster times without clothing - which led to a “change in the public” and caused specialist readers to drop out.

Web link

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Bad . In: Der Spiegel . No. 49 , 1973, pp. 166 ( online ).
  2. ↑ A magazine has to give up . In: Sport-Illustrierte, No. 45/1973, p. 3.
  3. ↑ Ernst Hornickel: Start and finish . In: Sport-Illustrierte, No. 2/1949, p. 4
  4. ↑ Harald Pistorius: Everything except football: The new magazine No Sports is that good . In: Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung (November 15, 2016).