Titanic (magazine)
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| Categories | Satirical Magazine |
|---|---|
| Frequency | monthly |
| Circulation | 99,760 [1] |
| First issue | 1979 |
| Company | TITANIC Verlag GmbH & Co. KG |
| Country | Germany |
| Website | titanic-magazin.de |
Titanic is a German satirical magazine which is published monthly. It is based in Frankfurt and probably Germany's best-known satirical publication, and it is one of the country's largest (approx. 100,000 copies printed).
Contents |
[edit] History
Titanic was founded in 1979 by a group consisting mainly of former editors of Pardon, a satirical monthly which they had left after continuous conflicts with its publisher (Pardon ceased to exist only three years thereafter). The founding staff of Titanic consisted of writers and cartoonists who were mostly based in Frankfurt and who are therefore often called "New Frankfurt School", a term that half-jokingly refers to the Frankfurt School in philosophy. To this day, Titanic's monthly reviews of humorous publications bear the portrait of Theodor W. Adorno wearing a fake goatee in their heading.
The magazine's favourite subject was undoubtedly chancellor Helmut Kohl, who appeared on the front page more often than any other person. In the 1980s, Titanic coined his nickname "Birne", the German word for pear (accompanied with drawings of his head resembling a pear).
There have always been more or less media-oriented activities of Titanic staff members. The first of those which became known to a larger public was an incognito appearance of Bernd Fritz (then editor-in-chief) in Wetten, dass..?. In recent years, the magazine has repeatedly attracted attention, for example by taking the football world cup to Germany by bribing a FIFA delegate (see below).
Before the German federal election, 2005 it was running a campaign against "das Merkel" ("das" being the neutral gender definite article) and was publicly searching for a female contender for chancellor with the slogan "Frau? Ja, aber schön" ("Woman? Yes, but beautiful"). In 2004, Titanic founded a political party, called Die PARTEI (simply: "the party") which lists the rebuilding of the Berlin wall as its goal, among others. Die PARTEI has since forged an alliance with the Anarchist Pogo Party of Germany.
The history of Titanic has seen a large number of scandals, and the number of lawsuits against Titanic is as astonishing as the amount of money that had to be paid after some of them. Until 2001, 40 lawsuits were set off. Politician Björn Engholm for example received 40,000 Deutsche Mark in compensation, which, in combination with 190,000 DM court costs, drove Titanic close to bankruptcy.
[edit] 2006 FIFA World Cup bribery affair
In July 2000, Martin Sonneborn (then Titanic's editor in chief) sent hoax bribery faxes to a number of delegates of the FIFA World championship committee urging them to support the German bid for the 2006 FIFA World Cup in return for a gift.
Before, it was widely expected that the tournament would take place in South Africa, but New Zealand's representative, Charles Dempsey, who had been instructed to vote for South Africa by the Oceania Football Confederation, abstained from voting at the last minute. If he had voted for the Africans, the tally would have been 12:12, giving the decision to FIFA President Sepp Blatter, who had supported South Africa's bid. Dempsey was among eight members of the executive committee to receive Sonneborn's fax on Wednesday, the night before the vote, promising a cuckoo clock and Black Forest ham in exchange for voting for Germany:
In this difficult situation, Germany would like to emphasize the urgency of its appeal to hold the World Cup 2006 in Germany.
Let me come straight to the point:
In appreciation of your support we would like to offer you a small gift for your vote in favor of Germany:
A fine basket with specialties from the black forest, including some really good sausages, ham and -- hold on to your seat -- a wonderful KuKuClock!
And a beer mug, too! Do we leave you any choice?We trust in the wisdom of your decision tomorrow,
sincerly yoursMartin Sonneborn
Secretary TDES
(WM 2006 initiative)—Original text of the fax, sent by Titanic on July 5th, 2000
Dempsey himself famously stated "This final fax broke my neck." He argued that the pressure from all sides had become too much for him [1].
In July 2000, the biggest German tabloid BILD-Zeitung encouraged its readers to phone Titanic and express their outrage for damaging Germany's reputation through bribery. Titanic recorded those phone calls and published an audio CD with a selection of the funniest of them, called "BILD-Leser beschimpfen Titanic" ("BILD-readers insult Titanic").
The German soccer association threatened Sonneborn with a €300 million damage suit and forced him to swear never again to influence a FIFA decision. In November 2005, Sonneborn published a book about the affair, "Ich tat es für mein Land" - Wie TITANIC einmal die Fußball-WM 2006 nach Deutschland holte. Protokoll einer erfolgreichen Bestechung ("I did it for my country" - How TITANIC once brought the Football World Cup 2006 to Germany. Journal of a successful bribery), Bombus Verlag, ISBN 3936261377.
In 2006, the year in which the world cup finally took place in Germany, Titanic arranged an exhibition called "Wie Titanic einmal die Fußball-WM 2006 nach Deutschland holte" ("How Titanic once brought the Football World Cup to Germany") in the Historical Museum of Frankfurt am Main, documenting the events before and after the sending of the infamous fax by the magazine.
[edit] References
- BBC Sport: Call for World Cup revote. July 7, 2000.
- BBC News World Edition: Legal threat over World Cup prank. July 8, 2000.
- David Crossland. The Hoax That Brought the World Cup to Germany, Spiegel Online, 17 January 2006
[edit] External links
- Official website (German)
- Die PARTEI (German)
