[6] Technical advances including photo-offset printing, the linotype machine and cheaper production of paper later made it possible to sell it for 10 pfennigs an issue, which was within the reach even of workers.

[8]) Once it no longer required a subscription, the Berliner Illustrirte fundamentally changed the newspaper market, attracting readers by its appearance, particularly the eye-catching pictures.

Building on the example of a rival Berlin publication, August Scherl's Die Woche, Ullstein developed it into the prototype of the modern news magazine.

[10] In August 1919, a cover photograph of the German President Friedrich Ebert and Minister of Defence Gustav Noske on holiday on the Baltic coast, clad in swimming trunks, caused heated debate about propriety; within a decade, such informality would seem normal.

The cover image of the 23 April 1912 issue was an allegorical drawing of the iceberg which claimed the Titanic as death,[20][21] and the strip cartoon Vater und Sohn by E. O. Plauen (Erich Ohser) was the most popular in 1930s Germany.

In the 25 March 1934 issue it began serial publication of Hermann Göring's memoirs, written by Eberhard Koebsell, but was forced to withdraw them after Goebbels objected.

[31] In mid-1934 the Ullstein family business was "aryanised",[32] and the Berliner Illustrirte became an organ of Nazi propaganda; previously non-political, with the outbreak of war in 1939, it started featuring stories about the military and German victories.

[33] One of its noted photojournalists, Eric Borchert, was embedded with Erwin Rommel's troops in early 1941 to produce propaganda photos of the Africa campaign, along with a cinematographer and an artist.