Government and audience support

For several centuries Germany has enjoyed a tradition of governmental support of the arts. Before the founding of the German Empire in 1871, the many small kingdoms, principalities, duchies, bishoprics, and free cities that preceded it—as well as Austria and German-speaking Switzerland—supported the arts; they established theatres, museums, and libraries, and their leaders acted as patrons for poets, writers, painters, and performers. The institutions thus founded and the convention of generous public support have continued uninterrupted to the present.

 

• Scene from a 2005 performance of Philip Glass's Waiting for the …

In few countries are the arts so lavishly cultivated as in Germany in terms of the proliferation of cultural amenities, the funds allotted to them, and the attendance upon them. Although this abundance and generous support has not called forth a new era of brilliance to rival that of the Weimar Republic—when Germany (especially Berlin) experienced a resurgence in the arts and a proliferation of creative talents unparalleled since German Classicism and Romanticism—there are a number of noteworthy individual talents and movements dotting the contemporary landscape.

Literature and theatre

 

• Friedrich Schiller, chalk drawing by F.G. Weitsch, 1804; in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin

 

• Günter Grass, 1997.

The German theatre has long been faced with the dilemma of either being bold and innovative or relying on the rich repertoire of German classics from the 18th and 19th centuries, a limited number of established 20th-century dramas from artists such as Brecht, Carl Zuckmayer, or Max Frisch, and contemporary plays in translation from Britain, France, and the United States. While the system of public subsidies and ticket subscriptions favours a steady diet of Goethe, Schiller, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Jean Anouilh, Anton Chekhov, and Brecht, it also allows for risks and for the plays of late 20th-century dramatists such as Martin Walser and Patrick Süskind to be performed. Small experimental theatres enjoy a lively, if hazardous, existence in the major cities and often closely resemble Germany's still vibrant political cabaret.

In East Germany all theatres were state-owned. The German Theatre (Deutsches Theater) in Berlin reopened in September 1945 and was the first German theatre to perform following the Nazi collapse. The old German National Theatre (Deutsches Nationaltheater) in Weimar was the first to be rebuilt after 1945. Understandably, Berlin dominated theatrical developments, especially because of the work of Brecht at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm. Given a haven in East Germany—a theatre and a company, along with the political and artistic latitude he required—Brecht was able to produce and perform his own works exclusively. Nevertheless, the Berliner Ensemble, as his group was named, possibly commanded more critical and popular attention in the West, where his plays are still widely performed, than on its home ground. (For further discussion, see German literature.)

Music and dance

In the 12th and 13th centuries, German poets and musicians known as minnesingers, influenced by the troubadours and trouvères of France, composed and performed songs of courtly love for the Hohenstaufen dukes of Franconia and Swabia. Their most prominent representative, Walther von der Vogelweide, is recognized for his didactic moral and religious poetry as well as for his poems of love. Later, fraternities of mostly middle-class singers developed into singing schools (Singschulen), organized as craft guilds, in free cities such as Mainz, where the first such school is said to have been founded in the early 13th century by the minnesinger Frauenlob. The schools of the Meistersingers, as they came to be known, spread to other German cities, notably Nürnberg. The outstanding 16th-century Meistersinger Hans Sachs is celebrated in the opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg by Richard Wagner.

In the mid-16th century the leader of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, composed chorales, many of them based on older Latin hymns and secular tunes, for performance in religious services. The chorale, a musical form characteristic of the Protestant church in Germany, was developed in sophisticated ways in the early 17th century by the composer and musicologist Michael Praetorius. Heinrich Schütz, widely considered the greatest German composer of the 17th century, produced sacred vocal music that melded the newer styles of his Italian teachers (notably Giovanni Gabrieli) with traditional German forms; his Dafne was the first German opera.

 

• Johann Sebastian Bach, oil on canvas by J.J. Ihle, 1720.

 

• Ludwig van Beethoven, portrait by Josef Karl Stieler.

 

• Felix Mendelssohn, painting by Eduard Magnus, c. 1845.

In the late 19th and the early 20th century Richard Strauss composed operas and operettas but is best remembered for his tone poems, especially Don Juan and Also sprach Zarathustra. His contemporary the Austrian Gustav Mahler anticipated the compositional techniques of the 20th century and is generally regarded as the last great composer in the Austro-German tradition. In the early 20th century the Austrian Arnold Schoenberg invented the atonal method of composition known as serialism, or the 12-tone technique, to which German composer Paul Hindemith responded by developing a system of composition that expanded traditional tonality. Also shaped by Schoenberg, the Austrian composer Alban Berg produced exceptional works—notably his operas Wozzeck and Lulu—in atonal style. Carl Orff, in addition to composing, created an innovative system of musical education for children.

In the late 1920s Kurt Weill collaborated with Brecht to satirize the corruption of modern capitalism in Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera; including the standard "Mack the Knife" ) and Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (“Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny”). In these and other works, Weill employed a “cabaret” style incorporating popular tunes, jazz, and ragtime. The rise of the Nazis in 1933 forced many German composers and musicians to flee to the United States. In the decades after World War II, Karlheinz Stockhausen, the most eminent of contemporary German composers, produced avant-garde electronic music that radically extended the expressive possibilities of serialism. Other significant German composers of the second half of the 20th century included Bernd Alois Zimmerman, best known for his opera Die Soldaten (“The Soldiers”), and Hans Werner Henze.

The Berlin Philharmonic, led for more than three decades by Herbert von Karajan, is among the world's leading orchestras, as are the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig, formerly conducted by Kurt Masur; the Bamberg Symphonic Orchestra; the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. Many German musicians, including the conductor and pianist Christian Thielemann and the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, and concert vocalists, including Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Peter Schreir, enjoy international reputations. Moreover, the opera houses of Hamburg (the oldest), Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt, and Munich are among the world's most renowned. The system of state-supported opera has allowed many young North American and British singers lacking opportunities at home to train in Germany, and some remain in the permanent companies there.

Germany has also been proving ground for foreign rock musicians, from the Beatles apprenticeship in clubs along Hamburg's Reeperbahn in the early 1960s to fellow Englishman David Bowie's landmark recordings in Berlin and the collaborations of Italian producer Giorgio Moroder and American disco diva Donna Summer in Munich's Musicland Studios in the 1970s. German performers have also left their mark on rock, not least the influential groups Can, Faust, and Tangerine Dream, whose innovative music emerged in the early 1970s and was dubbed “Krautrock” by Anglo-American critics. A wave of other German groups followed, notably Kraftwerk, who helped lay the foundation for the modern techno music celebrated by tens of thousands of revelers in Berlin's annual Love Parade. Curiously, East Germany's best-known rock performer was leftist American expatriate Dean Reed (the “Red Elvis”), who was especially popular in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and '80s.

Dance also has been an important part of German cultural life. In the 18th century the waltz, a ballroom dance for couples, developed from regional social dances of southern Germany and Austria, such as the Dreher, Ländler, and Deutscher. The waltz quickly gained popularity in other European countries, perhaps because it appeared to represent some of the abstract values of the Romantic era, the ideals of freedom, character, passion, and expressiveness. Vienna became the city of the waltz. The early 19th century was the age of the Viennese waltz kings, most notably the composers of the Strauss family.

Ballet in Germany was generally relegated to various court opera productions. During the French choreographer Jean-Georges Noverre's appointment at Stuttgart (1760–67), Germany briefly became a significant centre for ballet. However, German theatrical dance lacked a unified movement until the 20th century.

Modern dance was embraced in Germany, where it was known as Ausdruckstanz (“expressionistic dance”). Early modern dance pioneers such as Mary Wigman, Kurt Jooss, and Hanya Holm had a broad influence on dance practice, particularly in the United States. The Stuttgart Ballet at the Württemberg State Theatre rose to world prominence in the 1960s under its South African-born director John Cranko, and its success continued under Marcia Haydée and Reid Anderson after Cranko's death in 1973. In Wuppertal in the 1970s the choreographer Pina Bausch pioneered the innovative form known as Tanztheater (“dance theatre”), which was widely influential into the 1980s. The Hamburg Ballet is also a lively centre of world ballet. (For further discussion, see music, Western; waltz; and ballet.)

The visual arts

Germany has a strong, rich tradition in the visual arts. In the medieval era, the reign of Charlemagne introduced German artists to the three-dimensionality of Roman art. Paintings and sculptures, often in the Gothic style popularized in France and Germany, were generally made to decorate churches, and illuminated manuscripts and stained glass were also created. In the 15th century, the design of altarpieces, which combined the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, became a popular pursuit, and the rise of book printing led to the design of many fine woodcut illustrations. In the late 15th and the 16th centuries, a generation of German artists emerged that included Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, Matthias Grünewald, and Hans Holbein the Younger, all of whom worked in a style influenced by the Italian Renaissance; their work represented a golden age in German art. During this era, the Protestant Reformation of the 1520s brought about the destruction of some art that was deemed idolatrous and led to more secular subject matter, as seen in the numerous self-portraits by Dürer.

Subsequent generations of artists explored French and Italian variations on the Baroque and Rococo, but German art did not develop a definite national character again until the mid-18th century, when a staid Neoclassicism, advocated by theorist Johann Winckelmann and a series of new art academies, took hold. At the turn of the 19th century, Romanticism blossomed, perhaps best exemplified in the work of Caspar David Friedrich and Philipp Otto Runge, who in the first quarter of the century explored nature with a passionate, almost religious fervour. By the late 19th century, artists began to form groups that seceded from the conservative teachings and exhibition opportunities of the academies. Nevertheless, the staid Neoclassical style mostly dominated until the late 19th century, when secessionist groups formed in Munich (1892), Berlin (1898), and, under the leadership of Gustav Klimt, Vienna (1897).

German painters of the 20th century, especially groups such as Die Brücke (“The Bridge”) and Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider”), developed a new Expressionist current in European art. Beginning in 1916, Kurt Schwitters, George Grosz, Hannah Höch, John Heartfield, and others explored the more theoretical concerns of Dada, while in the 1920s artists such as Otto Dix and photographer August Sander worked in the realistic, socially critical style known as Neue Sachlichkeit (“New Objectivity”).

These and other developments came to a halt in 1933 with the rise of the National Socialists. Hitler and the Nazi regime condemned most modern art, holding the infamous Entartete Kunst (“Degenerate Art”) show in 1937 in an attempt to make a mockery of artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Emil Nolde, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Conservative, “heroic” German landscape art was instead promoted as an ideal art form.

After World War II, German art struggled to regain a sense of direction, challenged by the emigration of many important German artists to France or the United States. In East Germany a form of Socialist Realism dominated artistic practice, a trend that would continue until reunification. In West Germany, however, many artists experimented with avant-garde movements such as Abstract Expressionism, Pop art, minimalism, and Op art. Beginning in the 1960s, Joseph Beuys created sculpture, performance art, and installation art that challenged the very definition of “high art.” Incorporating materials such as fat and felt, Beuys's work represented an individual take on Pop art's goal of bringing art into the realm of the everyday experience; his example influenced a new generation of artists. Perhaps the most notable German figure of the 1970s was Gerhard Richter, who became known for his paintings based on photographs. Blurring the lines between the media of photography and painting, his beautifully executed works anticipated the challenge to traditional forms that would characterize postmodern art. German art was again at the centre of the international art world when Neo-Expressionism became the dominant international trend of the 1980s. Building upon German art's long-standing interest in Expressionism, artists such as Georg Baselitz (who had been making important work since the 1960s), Anselm Kiefer, and Sigmar Polke combined a raw, expressive application of paint with challenging subject matter.

At the turn of the 21st century, photography became the international medium of choice. German artists who won international art prizes and had their work featured in the world's most prominent museums included Wolfgang Tillmans, who gained attention for his portraits of youth culture; Bernd and Hilla Becher, who adopted a formalist approach and won a coveted lifetime achievement prize at the Infinity Awards in 2003; Thomas Struth, who became especially well known for his series of photographs set within major museum galleries; and Andreas Gursky, who became known for his large-scale photographs of public spaces. (For further discussion, see painting, Western; and photography, history of.)

Architecture

 

• The Römer, the old town hall, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Contemporary German architecture—indeed world architecture—is very much the creature of the Bauhaus school that originated in Weimar in the 1920s and is associated with the names of Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. In the postwar years the dogmas of the Bauhaus school—the insistence on strict harmony of style with function and on the intrinsic beauty of materials, as well as a puritan disdain of decorativeness—were dutifully applied in building after building in city after city. Yet in West Germany, as elsewhere in the 1960s and '70s, the stark Bauhaus style began to yield to the more free-ranging postmodernism, which took as its precept “not just function but fiction as well.” The unremitting rectangularity of the International style was to be softened by elements of regionalism. Leading exponents of this school include Josef Paul Kleihues, Oswald Mathias Ungers, and the brothers Rob and Leon Krier.

Architectural developments in East Germany reflected the influence of Soviet ideological tenets and models. Buildings in the eastern region differ from those in western Germany in the immensity of their proportions. The major showpieces in eastern Berlin—the government buildings, apartment blocks, hotels, and public spaces along Unter den Linden, Marx-Engels-Platz, Alexanderplatz, and Karl-Marx-Allee, and the startlingly graceless Leipziger-Strasse—and their exaggerated decorations all testify to a propensity for sheer vastness. Later architecture under the communist regime is immediately recognizable not only by excessive dimensions, whether horizontal or vertical, but also by monotonously white facades seldom relieved by colour trimming. Except where ideological factors intruded (as in the destruction of the Berlin Palace), the East German government had a reasonable record for the preservation of historic buildings.

After unification the long-deserted Potsdamer Platz in the heart of Berlin, once a focus of Berlin's economic and administrative life, came alive with the construction of an array of public and private buildings by internationally renowned architects such as Renzo Piano, Helmut Jahn, and Richard Rogers. After somewhat acrimonious artistic and political debates, an agreement was reached to construct a Holocaust memorial in the area. (For further discussion, see architecture, Western.)

Film

 

• The inventor C.A. Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) and his robotic invention (Brigitte Helm) in Fritz …

After World War II the studios of the giant UFA (Universum-Film-Aktiengesellschaft) in Babelsberg (a suburb of Potsdam), the centre of German film production from 1917 to 1945, were in East German hands; the industry continued as a government-owned enterprise known as DEFA (Deutsche Film-Akademie), noted for animation, documentaries, and feature films, some of which achieved recognition at international film festivals. DEFA was privatized into six divisions in 1992, and its historical film stock has been preserved by the publicly owned DEFA Foundation.

In the 1960s West Germany's changing demographics, plus the encroachment of television, caused the collapse of its domestic film market. A group of young filmmakers, first organized at the Oberhausen Film Festival in 1962, established das neue Kino, or the New German Cinema. Relying on state subsidy to subsist, the members of the movement sought to examine Germany's unbewältige Vergangenheit, or “unassimilated past.” The New German Cinema had little commercial success outside of Germany, but it still was internationally influential. The critical acclaim afforded directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Volcker Schlöndorff, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, Wolfgang Petersen, and Percy Aldon helped reestablish West Germany as a serious filmmaking country, as did the work of actors such as Klaus Kinski, Bruno Ganz, and Hanna Schygulla. Women directors, such as Margarethe von Trotta, Helma Sanders-Brahms, and Doris Dörrie also came to prominence during the 1970s and '80s.

Germany's reunification in 1990 cut short attempts to forge a national cinematic identity in eastern Germany, though some notable productions marked the following decade, among them Tom Tykwer's Lola rennt (1998; Run Lola Run), Katja von Garnier's Bandits (1996), Herzog's Mein liebster Feind (1999; My Best Fiend), and Wenders's Buena Vista Social Club (1999). Some noted German filmmakers also found significant success in the United States. Roland Emerich, for example, established himself in the action-adventure genre, and Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot, 1982) became one of Hollywood's more noted practitioners of the thriller. Moreover, many of Hollywood's most prominent cinematographers, composers, and production artists have also hailed from Germany. However, at the beginning of the 21st century, though there was no shortage of German filmmaking talent, few German directors were producing German films. (For further discussion, see motion picture, history of.)

Arts festivals

The arts are celebrated with a proliferation of festivals in Germany on a scale scarcely equaled in any other country. Most major cities and scores of small towns and villages sponsor festivals that celebrate all genres of music, film, and the performing arts. Among the most renowned of these is the Bayreuth Festival, which celebrates the works of Richard Wagner. Founded by the composer himself in 1876, it is still under the direction of his descendants. The oldest German festival is the Passion play, first held in 1634 and now held every 10 years in Oberammergau in southern Bavaria to celebrate the town's deliverance from the plague.

 

• Booths at a fall festival in Heidelberg, Ger.

Museums and galleries

 

• The MARTa Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, in Herford, near Hanover, Ger.

Libraries

Among Germany's great libraries are the Bavarian State Library in Munich (the largest), the library of the Prussian Cultural Property Foundation (formerly the Prussian State Library), and National Library in Berlin. The German Library at Frankfurt am Main is the country's library of deposit and bibliographic centre. The Technical Library at Hannover is Germany's most important library for science and technology and for translations of works in the fields of science and engineering. The great university libraries at Heidelberg, Cologne, Göttingen, Leipzig, Tübingen, and Munich are complemented by scores of other good university libraries. A wealth of manuscripts, early printed works, and documents from the Middle Ages to the present are dispersed in smaller collections. The great research libraries are complemented by an extensive system of lending libraries operated by the states, the municipalities, the library associations of the Roman Catholic and Evangelical churches, and other public associations and institutes. Virtually all citizens are within easy access of a library.

Sporting culture

Unity and disunity may be constant themes of German history, but in sports and physical culture Germans have long been well organized. In the early 19th century, coincident with the rise of nationalism, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, considered the “father of gymnastics,” founded the turnverein, a gymnastics club, and invented several of the disciplines that are now part of the Olympic gymnastics program. At the same time, Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths initiated school programs that helped bring physical education to the forefront of German education. Ideals of health—Gesund—and athletic prowess became important components of the German conception of self. These ideals were later critical to the Nazi conception of the ideal German.

German athletes participated in the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 in Athens. In the aftermath of World War I, the country was not invited to the Olympic Games until the 1928 Winter Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland. However, Berlin was designated as the site for the 1936 Olympics in 1931, before the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, who transformed the Games into a stage to promote Nazi ideals, though this effort was thwarted somewhat by key victories by African American sprinter and long jumper Jesse Owens and other “non-Aryan” athletes. The 1936 Berlin Olympics also inaugurated the tradition of the Olympic torch relay, with the lighted torch carried from Olympia, Greece, to the Berlin stadium.

 

• Max Schmeling, 1932.

Following partition, East and West German athletes competed on the same national team from 1956 to 1964. The two countries then split their teams for the next six Olympiads, joining the front lines of Cold War athletic competition. In 1972 Munich hosted the Summer Games, which were marred when Palestinian terrorists took hostage and killed 11 members of the Israeli team.

Germany's Olympic teams—East, West, and unified—have dominated many events, especially swimming. Indeed, in 1976 and 1980 East German female swimmers, including the famed Kornelia Ender, set more than 10 world records and captured 22 of the 26 gold medals. Among other renowned German Olympians are swimmers Kristin Otto and Michael Gross, figure skater Katarina Witt, speed skaters Karin Enke and Christa Luding-Rothenburger, luger Georg Hackl, sprinter Armin Hary, and equestrian Hans Günter Winkler.

 

• A ball from the 2006 World Cup in the grass in Allianz Arena, Munich, Ger.

The government of the Third Reich militarized many German sports, equating athletic and military excellence. In the period after World War II, organized sports suffered from this tainted association, but the devotion of Germans to health and fitness continued, and the West German government quickly made efforts to democratize sporting activities by emphasizing recreation and personal development over victory. Physical education is mandatory throughout the primary and secondary grades, and summertime camps devoted to outdoor recreation, especially swimming, hiking, and mountaineering, enjoy widespread popularity. Academic study of sports and sporting cultures has also flourished in Germany.

Leisure activities

Leisure is a major pursuit, if not an industry, in German life. As did workers in most Western industrial countries, Germans once toiled under an unrestricted six-day workweek, often 10 hours a day with breaks only on Sundays and for major feasts and festivals. Added to these traditional feasts and festivals now are several secular holidays and three to six weeks or more of paid vacation time. Moreover, the German workweek is now 40 hours or less. As a result, Germans have more leisure time than workers of most Western countries. This abundance of leisure has become a national preoccupation, and the German Leisure Association conducts research on leisure activity and dispenses information and advice.

The German pattern of recreation is characterized by a duality of traditional and modern approaches. To a surprising extent in a country so highly industrialized, ancient feasts and practices are still observed on a wide scale in both Roman Catholic and Protestant areas, especially pre-Lenten celebrations known as Fasching in the southern regions or Karneval (carnival) in the Rhineland. In addition to the major religious festivals—Easter, Christmas, Whitsun (which are also national holidays), and, in Roman Catholic districts, Corpus Christi Day and Assumption—there are numerous local celebrations—wine, beer, harvest, hunting, and historical festivals—the so-called Volksfeste that are deeply rooted in German custom, the most notable being Munich's Oktoberfest, held each September.

Although the traditional observances continue unabated, Germans have adopted a wide range of more modern forms of recreation, amusement, and relaxation. Travel has become the favoured pastime of a majority of Germans. More than half of all adults take at least one annual trip for pleasure, and a great number take more than one. Many Germans now take both a winter and summer vacation. Older persons often take a paid Kur at a spa to rest and recuperate, in addition to a holiday trip for pleasure. More Germans take leisure trips abroad than the citizens of any other country.

The weekend, a latecomer in Germany, has become firmly established. Private recreation typically includes spectator amusements and sports (especially football), active sports and physical exercise, automobile excursions, the pursuit of hobbies, visits with friends and family, and the long-favoured German pastime of walking or hiking.

It is estimated that about one-fifth of a household's income in Germany's western regions is spent on leisure expenses. Many institutions, including the government, local communities, schools, churches, and companies, encourage citizens to channel their free time into useful, rewarding, and healthful pursuits by providing physical facilities, impetus, and other prerequisites for all phases of public recreation. Leisure in Germany is now regarded—much like education and vocational training, decent housing, a job, good public transportation, health and disability insurance, and pensions—as an entitlement and a valuable adjunct of social policy.

In East Germany, leisure activity was arranged very differently. The state ideal was group leisure, group holidays, and group travel, often organized by the workplace or a youth organization. Cheap holiday facilities were available, especially along the resorts of the Baltic coast. Residents of East Germany were at liberty to travel privately to any of the Warsaw Pact countries and sometimes to Yugoslavia. It is worth noting that the fall of the communist bloc was precipitated in part by the large number of East Germans who, while visiting Hungary, crossed unimpeded into Austria when the Hungarian government opened its border with the West.

Broadcasting

Although German radio and television are not state-controlled, only public corporations were permitted to broadcast until the mid-1980s, when a dual system of public and commercial stations was established. Still, in 1986 the Federal Constitutional Court held that the public corporations comprised the “basic supply” of news and entertainment and commercial outlets were only a “supplementary supply.” Licensing and control of public broadcasting is under the Federal Ministry of Post and Telecommunications. Support for public broadcasting is provided by fees paid by the owners of radios and television sets.

The public corporations enjoy great freedom in establishing their own broadcasting policies. Attempts to control these policies, which are often hostile to incumbent governments, have been repeatedly rebuffed; thus, in practice, German television, more than radio, enjoys remarkable latitude and independence in what it broadcasts.

Public radio and television are arranged along national and regional lines, with a number of regional corporations that offered two to four radio programming schedules combining to form one evening television offering, ARD (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Öffentlich-Rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten Deutschlands). This is complemented by a second television network, ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen), which is based in Mainz. A third channel is operated by ARD but is organized and broadcast regionally, with special emphasis placed on local and regional events and school instruction, as well as on educational, informational, and fine arts programs. The uneven quality of entertainment in both radio and television is offset by the high-quality news coverage and political and social reporting that makes the German public one of the best-informed of any country.

Two radio stations—Deutschland Radio and Deutsche Welle—are publicly operated to provide a comprehensive German perspective of events; Deutsche Welle is beamed to Europe and overseas. There are also several regional public radio stations that provide localized programming and some 200 private radio stations that are regionally and locally focused.

Cable television has been greatly expanded. Supplied by satellite transmissions, the cable networks offer extensive programming from public and commercial television in Germany and from abroad.

During the years of partition, viewers in East Germany could freely receive radio and television broadcasts from West Germany and from West Berlin, with the result that the public in East Germany kept current on news from the West. The broadcasting facilities in the former East Germany were reorganized along lines of the western states—i.e., each of the new states has its own regional stations.

The press

Germans are voracious readers of newspapers and periodicals. Freedom of the press is guaranteed under the Basic Law, and the economic state of Germany's several hundred newspapers and thousands of periodicals is enviably healthy. Most major cities support two or more daily newspapers, in addition to community periodicals, and few towns of any size are without their own daily newspaper. During the 1990s most German newspapers and periodicals published daily or weekly editions on the Internet, enabling access far beyond their traditional print circulation.

The press is free of government control, no newspaper is owned by a political party, and only about 10 percent of newspapers overtly support a political party, though most offer a distinctly political point of view. Laws restrict the total circulation of newspapers or magazines that can be controlled by one publisher or group. The Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartel Office) oversees German industry (including the media) to ensure against a company abusing its dominant position within a particular industry. Although newspaper and periodical ownership cannot be the monopoly of any one ownership, Axel Springer Verlag AG controls a significant share of the market. Other major newspaper publishers, some of which also publish magazines and other periodicals, include Gruner+Jahr AG (a Bertelsmann company), Süddeutscher Verlag, Heinrich Bauer Verlag, and Burda. The German Press Council, established in 1956, sets out guidelines and investigates complaints against the press.

A national press exists on one level in the form of Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich), Die Welt (Berlin), and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, together with regional newspapers (e.g., the Stuttgarter Zeitung, the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (Essen), and the Frankfurter Rundschau), which also command international circulation and respect. Another level of the national press is represented by the universally circulated tabloid Bild (Hamburg), which has the largest readership of any paper and publishes several regional editions.

Berlin has many daily newspapers, including the liberal Der Tagesspiegel, the conservative Berliner Morgenpost, and the Berliner Zeitung, which had originally been published in East Germany. The Berliner Zeitung was acquired by western press interests after unification and swiftly gained recognition as the city's preeminent newspaper. Other leading newspapers of the former East Germany were also bought by western publishers.

The major edition of German newspapers, replete with politics and arts features, is published on Saturday. A lively Sunday press complements the daily newspapers, providing an overview, perspective, and interpretation of major news developments as well as political comment and artistic criticism; the most prestigious and influential of these is Die Zeit (Hamburg). Others include the venerable Rheinischer Merkur (Bonn), the Bayernkurier (Munich), and the Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt (Hamburg). Sunday counterparts of the major dailies, Welt am Sonntag and Bild am Sonntag, are run virtually as separate newspapers, competing with the other weeklies.

The genre of the Illustrierte (pictorial) dominates the German magazine market. Some of these popular weekly glossies, such as Stern and Bunte, carry features, including investigative reporting, of a high calibre; others, however, cater to an unquenchable public thirst for the escapades of celebrities, bizarre crime, the annals of gracious living, and sundry escapist topics. Apart from a wealth of specialized journals and quality business-oriented magazines, the role of high-prestige magazines of opinion is largely subsumed by the weighty weekend editions of the quality press.

A special niche is occupied by the weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel, a journalistic power in its own right, which, since its founding in the period immediately after World War II, has shaped public opinion in Germany through its editorial posture as the skeptical, nonaligned observer and guardian of the public conscience. Exhaustive in its coverage and polemical in tone, it features thorough, critical investigations of events from both the past and the present.

Publishing

Germany has some 2,000 publishing houses, and more than 50,000 titles reach the public each year, a production surpassed only by the United States. Germany traditionally was home to small and medium-size publishing houses. However, the Bertelsmann group, a multinational conglomerate based in Gütersloh, is now one of the world's largest publishers. Book publishing is not centred in a single city but is concentrated fairly evenly in Berlin, Hamburg, and the regional metropolises of Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, and Munich. Leipzig, prewar Germany's major publishing city, shared with East Berlin the major publishing houses of East Germany. Gotha in Thuringia is renowned for the production of maps and atlases.