Overview
- The paper marks 35 years since its 9 November 1990 debut from the merger of East Germany’s Sonntag and West Germany’s Volkszeitung, reaffirming a critical, plural left outlook on reunification.
- Essays catalog persistent East–West stereotypes and resentments and note their political exploitation, highlighting the AfD’s gains in regions such as Saxony‑Anhalt and citing figures like Dirk Oschmann and Sahra Wagenknecht.
- Lutz Herden recounts a near‑closure in 1995 and later publisher pushes to align with Crossover and R2G, urging the newsroom to pull no one’s cart and to test the bounds of permissible opinion.
- Multiple pieces argue that Germany’s opinion corridor has tightened most on Russia and the Ukraine war, referencing Richard David Precht’s view that acceptable speech has narrowed sharply.
- Georg Seesslen traces the contraction of left print media, noting hybrid or online pivots at titles like taz and stressing the democratic value of visible print as right‑wing outlets expand their presence at kiosks.