Stern (pronounced [ʃtɛʁn] ⓘ, German for "Star", stylized in all lowercase) is an illustrated, broadly left-liberal, weekly current affairs magazine published in Hamburg, Germany, by Gruner + Jahr, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann.

[1] Unusually for a popular magazine in post-war West Germany, and most notably in the contributions to 1975 of Sebastian Haffner, Stern investigated the origin and nature of the preceding tragedies of German history.

[8] The emphasis is on providing sufficient background on topic to allow readers opportunity to arrive at their own judgements rather than have these decided for them editorially or (as was commonly the case in the tabloid output of rival publisher Axel Springer) in the headlines.

As a result articles tended to be longer and more investigative, while distinguished from those of the similarly directed Der Spiegel by the wider range of social and life-style issues covered, and by a greater reliance of illustration and graphic design.

Stern was open to the questioning, from a liberal and left perspective, of the post-war political and social order in West Germany identified with the long Chancellorship (1949–1963) of Konrad Adenauer.

In the 1962 Spiegel affair, Stern denounced as violations of constitutional norms and press freedom, the effective closure by the government of the magazine's publishing rival.

[10] Stern found nothing to extenuate in the later violence of the Red Army Faction (the "Baader Meinhof Gang"), but in the 1960s it had not been completely hostile to the student protest movement from which the "urban guerillas" first emerged.

In June 1967, it permitted Sebastian Haffner to denounce the police response to a demonstration in West Berlin in which student protester Benno Ohnesorg was killed, as "a systematic, cold-blooded, planned pogrom".

50, 1970) published Sven Simon's (Axel Springer Jr.) iconic picture of Brandt kneeling before the memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on 20 Dezember 1970 on a double spread.

[17] The immediate occasion was a picture of the model Grace Jones, described by Schwarzer in her monthly Emma (7/1978) as "a black woman, naked, in her hand a phallic microphone and around the shackles – heavy chains".

The complainants proved unable in law to indict soft-pornographic practices that were rife in the popular press, but Nannen allowed that the case had "made us think".

The resulting fiasco led to the resignation of the magazine's editors, a sit-in by staff to protest the "management's bypassing traditional editorial channels and safeguards",[21] and a major press scandal that is still regarded as a low point in German journalism.

[23] In its 24 August 2017 edition Stern demonstrated its continued ability and willingness to generate cover-page controversy (and, for the purpose, to discard the restraints of nutzwertiger Journalismus).

A photo-shopped image depicted then United States President, Donald Trump, draped in the American flag while giving a stiff-armed Nazi salute.

[26] Stern responded: "The right-wing protesters in Charlottesville raised their arms in the Nazi salute and the American president has not distanced himself from this gesture or from the mindset of the people.