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 The 20 May 2009 front page | |
| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Nordisch |
| Owner | Südwestdeutsche Medien Holding [de] |
| Editor | Judith Wittwer |
| Founded | 6 October 1945 (1945-10-06) |
| Political alignment | Progressive-liberalism[1][2] Centre-left[3][4][5] |
| Headquarters | Munich, Germany |
| Circulation | 320,159 (Print, 2020) 90,998 (Digital, 2020)[6] |
| ISSN | 0174-4917 |
| Website | www |
TheSüddeutsche Zeitung (pronounced[ˈzyːtˌdɔʏtʃəˈtsaɪtʊŋ];lit. 'South German Newspaper'), published in Munich,Bavaria,[7] is one of the largest and most influential daily newspapers in Germany. The tone ofSZ is mainly described ascentre-left,[2][4]liberal,[8]social-liberal,[9]progressive-liberal,[2] andsocial-democrat.[10] It is considered one of Germany'snewspapers of record.[11][12]
TheSüddeutsche Zeitung was one of the first daily newspapers approved by the Allies after World War II and was first published on 6 October 1945.
The newspaper is published bySüddeutsche Verlag in Munich. It is majority owned by investment holdings and a small part by the original publishing family, the Friedmann family.
The editors-in-chief are Wolfgang Krach and Judith Wittwer. The chairman of the editorial board is Thomas Schaub.
On 6 October 1945,[13][14] five months after the end ofWorld War II in Germany, theSZ was the first newspaper to receive a license from theU.S. military administration ofBavaria. The first issue was published the same evening, reportedly printed from the same presses that had printedMein Kampf.[15]
Bernard B. McMahon, commander of the US intelligence control system, had previously been looking for a long time for non-Nazi ("untainted") licensees for a new German daily newspaper. He found them in the publishersAugust Schwingenstein,Edmund Goldschagg, andFranz Josef Schöningh.[16] Each had pre-Nazi journalism experience, Goldschagg had been arrested by theGestapo, and Schwingenstein had been a member of theReichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold.[17] The founders announced that Süddeutsche Zeitung would be "a mouthpiece for all Germans who are united in their love of freedom, in their hatred of the totalitarian state, in their abhorrence of everything that is National Socialist".[16]
The most important competitor is the more conservativeFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ).,[16] founded in 1949.
Declines in advertising in the early 2000s were so severe that the paper was on the brink of bankruptcy in October 2002. The Süddeutsche survived through a 150 million euro investment by a new shareholder, a regional newspaper chain called Südwestdeutsche Medien. Over three years, the newspaper underwent a reduction in its staff, from 425 to 307, the closing of a regional edition in Düsseldorf, and the scrapping of a section devoted to news from Berlin.[18]
In spring 2004,SZ launched theSüddeutsche Bibliothek. Each week, one of 50 famous novels of the 20th century was made available in hardcover at certain newsstands and in book shops. Later a series of 50 influential movies on DVD followed. In late 2004, the daily also launched apopular science magazine,SZ Wissen.[19] In late 2005, a series of children's books continued this branch of special editions.
In early 2015, the newspaper received a 2.6-terabyte dataset from an anonymous source. The dataset contained confidential information of a law firm offering the management of offshore companies. The newspaper in conjunction with theInternational Consortium of Investigative Journalists reviewed the data from thePanama Papers for over a year before publishing stories from it on 3 April 2016.[20]
In late 2017, the newspaper released snippets from a 1.4-terabyte dataset to be known as the "Paradise Papers" containing about 13.4 million documents, throwing light on the financial offshore jurisdictions, whose workings are unveiled, including Bermuda, the headquarters of the main company involved,Appleby, corporate services provider Estera, corporate registries in the Caribbean and Singapore-based international trust and corporate services provider,Asiaciti Trust. It contains the names of more than 120,000 people and companies.[21] The newspaper called in theInternational Consortium of Investigative Journalists to oversee the investigation. BBCPanorama andThe Guardian were among the nearly 100 media groups investigating the papers. The leaked data covers seven decades, from 1950 to 2016.[22]
In May 2018, the German Press Council opened an inquiry to determine whether aSüddeutsche Zeitung cartoon which depicted Israeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu was anti-Semitic; readers had complained that the image "reminded them of the anti-Semitic language of Nazi times".Süddeutsche Zeitung ended its decades-long collaboration with the cartoonist and apologized to readers, calling the cartoon a mistake.[23]
In August 2025,Süddeutsche Zeitung published an article questioning the authenticity of photographs of starving Palestinians in theGaza Strip.[24]
In German politics, the term liberalism is different from that in theUnited States, and like otherEuropean regions, it is a concept that encompasses bothcentre-right andcentre-left. Traditionally,Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung represents the view of right-wing liberals, whileSüddeutsche Zeitung represents the view of left-wing liberals.[25][26][27]
The paper, often abbreviatedSZ, is read throughout Germany by 1.1 million readers daily and boasts a relatively high circulation abroad. The editorial stance of the newspaper isprogressive-liberal and generally of acentre-left orientation,[3][5] leading some to joke that theSZ is the only meaningful opposition in the state ofBavaria, which has been governed by the conservativeChristian Social Union of Bavaria almost continuously since 1949. In the2013 elections the paper was among the supporters of theSPD.[28]
SZ is published inNordisch format.[29]
 | This section needs to beupdated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(July 2023) |
During the third quarter of 1992SZ had a circulation of 397,000 copies.[7] The 1993 circulation of the paper was 304,499 copies.[30] In 1995–96 it had a circulation of 407,000 copies.[31]
Its 2001 circulation was 436,000 copies and it was one of the top 100 European newspapers.[29] In 2003SZ had a circulation of 433,000 copies.[32] In the fourth quarter of 2004, it sold an average of 441,955 copies.[33] The circulation was 429,345 copies in the first quarter of 2006.[34] During the first quarter of 2012 it had a circulation of 432,000 copies.[13] The circulation in 2022 was 284,503.[35]
Of the national dailies, the two bestsellers are the centre-left Süddeutsche Zeitung ( sueddeutsche.de) and the centre-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ( faz.net), along with the liberal Berlin-based Tagesspiegel ( tagesspiegel.de) ...
Yet the critique of the Polish government is every bit as scathing in the liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung, whose EU correspondent Cornelia Bolesch writes that "the Polish government is parading the dead", and that the latter's "reference to ...
... which emphasize the problematic aspects of inequality are, as expected, markedly higher in all centre- left/ social- liberal newspapers across all countries (The Guardian, Irish Times, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and Der Standard).
He was in demand as a contributor and interlocutor with daily and weekly publications of all colours (the left-wing and alternative Tageszeitung and Libération, the social democrat Süddeutsche Zeitung, the progressive Die Zeit, ...
Süddeutsche Zeitung has, in recent years, pulled even with, or perhaps surpassed, theFrankfurter Allgemeine as the dailynewspaper of record in Germany
"leitmedium [de]" in Germany, .. using a term that translates as "leading medium", and describes the role of what is sometimes called a "newspaper of record" ...Süddeutsche Zeitung
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