Titanic (magazine)

From Freepedia

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).

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. Even today, Titanic's monthly reviews of humorous publications bear the (slightly altered) portrait of Theodor W. Adorno in the title.

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 "The 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 the recent years, the magazine has repeatedly attracted attention: In 2000, Martin Sonneborn (editor in chief) claimed that a fax he sent to members of the FIFA World championship committee, promising them a gift basket and a cuckoo clock if they voted in favor of the German application, led to the abstention of New Zealand's representative Charles Dempsey and thereby decided the vote, so Germany would host the WM in 2006. 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 bancrupcy.

In 2000 editors of Titanic sent hoax faxes to a number of FIFA delegates urging them to support the German bid in return for a gift manipulating the decision of the FIFA, where the Football World Cup 2006 should be held. Before, it was widely expected that the tournament would take place in South Africa, but the New Zealand FIFA member, Charles Dempsey, who was 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 a fax on Wednesday, the night before the vote, promising a cuckoo clock and Black Forest ham in exchange for voting for Germany. 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] The newspaper Bild-Zeitung asked their readers to phone Titanic and express their outrage. Later, Titanic published an audio CD with recordings of those calls.