RUDOLF AUGSTEIN: Rudolf Augstein, who died on Thursday aged 79, changed post-war German society and the way journalists reported it through his news magazine Der Spiegel.
Under his leadership, Der Spiegel became far more than just the "mirror" of its title. It remains a powerful institution which challenged state authority and uncovered more scandals than the rest of the German media combined. He will be remembered as the independent, combative journalist with forthright opinions who went to prison to defend press freedom.
Frank Schirrmacher, co-publisher of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said yesterday: "There are moments in post-war history when one doesn't think of the event, but rather the Spiegel cover."
Despite a self-professed cynicism of politicians, he lent his support to German leaders during the most crucial moments in Germany's post-war history. In the early 1970s he backed the efforts of Chancellor Willy Brandt to normalise relations with East Germany; two decades later he backed German unification after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The future of Der Spiegel magazine is secure: in 1974 he gave away half the shares in the privately held company to his journalists, ensuring they will have a say in its future.
Rudolf Augstein was born in Hanover, the sixth of seven children. He first showed an interest in journalism in 1941 as an unpaid assistant at a local newspaper. A year later he was drafted to the eastern front, where he sustained serious injuries which would plague him until the end of his life.
After a brief period in an allied prison after the war, he returned to a job with a Hanover newspaper, now under the control of British occupying forces. He won a licence from the British authorities to take over Diese Woche (This Week) magazine, reworking it into Der Spiegel, becoming editor and publisher at 23.
Der Spiegel was a thorn in the side of Germany's post-war chancellor, Mr Konrad Adenauer from the beginning. "If Churchill has a vocabulary of more than 15,000 words, our chancellor has 1,000 words at most and it remains open how many of those belong to his chief adviser," Augstein wrote in one of his many biting commentaries under the pseudonym "Jens Daniel". The magazine's circulation and stature grew in the post-war decades and by the mid-1970s, Der Spiegel was selling over a million copies, a circulation it maintains to this day.
Augstein had a brief flirtation with politics in 1972 when he won a seat in the Bonn parliament for the liberal Free Democrats. But after only three months he decided he preferred reporting on politics than making politics and resigned. The defining moment of his career remains a report in 1962 about NATO war manoeuvres in the middle of Cold War tensions.
The magazine's offices were raided and Augstein was put in prison facing charges of treason and bribery. Within days, thousands had gathered outside his prison cell chanting: "Spiegel Dead, Freedom Dead". Three months later he was released without charge.
It was appropriate, then, that Augstein's last contribution to Der Spiegel last month revisited what became known as the "Spiegel Affair, an event which, in Augstein's view, marked the end of the post-war era in Germany.
With the benefit of hindsight, he said: "What are 103 days in jail in a long life when you have achieved so much?" Mr Augstein leaves behind his fifth wife, Anna Maria, and four children from previous marriages.
Rudolf Augstein: born November 5th, 1923; died November 2002