Stern

Stern (, German for "Star") is an illustrated, broadly left-liberal, weekly current affairs magazine published in Hamburg, Germany, by Gruner + Jahr, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann. Under the editorship (1948–1980) of its founder Henri Nannen, it attained a circulation of between 1.5 and 1.8 million, the largest in Europe's for a magazine of its kind. Unusually for a popular magazine in post-war West Germany, and most notably in the contributions to 1975 of Sebastian Haffner, Stern investigated the origin and nature of the preceding tragedies of German history. In 1983, however, its credibility was seriously damaged by its purchase and syndication of the forged Hitler Diaries. A sharp drop in sales anticipated the general fall in newsprint readership in the new century. By 2019, circulation had fallen under half a million. History and profile Journalistic style Henri Nannen produced the first 16-page issue (with the actress Hildegard Knef on the cover) on 1 August 1948. He had been able to obtain the licence from the British military government in Hannover despite his wartime service in , a military propaganda unit in Italy. He moved the magazine to Hamburg where, in 1965, he founded , now one of the largest publishing houses in Europe.