[6] Its release was initiated and sponsored by the British occupational administration and preceded by a magazine titled Diese Woche (German: This Week),[6] which had first been published in November 1946.

The magazine's influence is based on two pillars; firstly the moral authority established by investigative journalism since the early years and proven alive by several scoops during the 1980s; secondly the economic power of the prolific Spiegel publishing house.

[17] In 2018, Der Spiegel became involved in a journalistic scandal after it discovered and made public that one of its leading reporters, Claas Relotius, had "falsified his articles on a grand scale".

In the course of this investigation, the editorial offices were raided by police while Rudolf Augstein and other Der Spiegel editors were arrested on charges of treason.

When the legal case collapsed, the scandal led to a major shake-up in chancellor Konrad Adenauer's cabinet, and Strauss had to stand down.

[9] In 2010, the magazine supported WikiLeaks in publishing leaked materials from the United States State Department, along with The Guardian, The New York Times, El País, and Le Monde[30] and in October 2013 with the help of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden unveiled the systematic wiretapping of Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel's private cell phone over a period of over 10 years at the hands of the National Security Agency's Special Collection Service (SCS).

[32] In November 2023, Der Spiegel joined with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Paper Trail Media [de] and 69 media partners including Distributed Denial of Secrets and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and more than 270 journalists in 55 countries and territories[33][34] to produce the 'Cyprus Confidential' report on the financial network which supports the regime of Vladimir Putin, mostly with connections to Cyprus, and showed Cyprus to have strong links with high-up figures in the Kremlin, some of whom have been sanctioned.

[35][36] Government officials including Cyprus president Nikos Christodoulides[37] and European lawmakers[38] began responding to the investigation's findings in less than 24 hours,[39] calling for reforms and launching probes.

[42][43][44] On 19 December 2018, Der Spiegel made public that reporter Claas Relotius had admitted that he had "falsified his articles on a grand scale", inventing facts, persons and quotations in at least 14 of his stories.

[18] The Wall Street Journal cited a former Der Spiegel journalist who said "some of the articles at issue appeared to confirm certain German stereotypes about Trump voters, asking "was this possible because of ideological bias?

[46] Mathias Bröckers, former Die Tageszeitung editor, wrote: "the imaginative author simply delivered what his superiors demanded and fit into their spin".

[47] American journalist James Kirchick claimed in The Atlantic that "Der Spiegel has long peddled crude and sensational anti-Americanism.

"[48][49] The US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell also wrote a letter to the magazine's editors, saying that Claas Relotius's journalism showed an anti-American bias.

[53][54][55] In 2023, the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) wrote that this story was "one of the largest fake news breakdowns since Claas Relotius.

"[56] The Hamburg state court ordered Der Spiegel in 2019 to remove unsupported claims from an article that accused the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK) of "torture" and "psychoterror.