About Society Magazin

Society Magazin

Society Magazin, usually styled SOCIETY, is an Austrian quarterly magazine based in Penzing, in Vienna, that reports on diplomacy, culture, business, politics, science and society with an international focus and a consistent Austrian connection. It is one of the most distinctive titles in the Austrian magazine market because it is not primarily a newsstand consumer magazine in the ordinary sense. Instead, it functions as an insider and diplomatic magazine, addressed directly to ambassadors, senior decision-makers, business leaders and cultural figures, and it is closely tied to the world of embassies, international organisations and official receptions in Vienna. That position reflects both its history and its ownership. The magazine in its present form dates from 1992, when it was founded by Gertrud Tauchhammer, and it is published by Tauchhammer KG, which is the sole media owner, in cooperation with the Austrian Society for Foreign Policy and the United Nations. Readers encountering Society for the first time should understand that its authority comes from access and continuity rather than from mass circulation, and this profile records what can be verified about the title while noting where independent public documentation remains limited.

Origins in the post-war UNO-Magazin

The history that Society itself and reference works recount reaches back well before 1992. According to the magazine's documented history, it is a fusion product of two publications. The older strand was the UNO-Magazin, founded in 1945 by a proponents' committee led by Karl Renner, the first Federal President of Austria's Second Republic. That earlier magazine was financed from funds of the Austrian Foreign Ministry and belonged to the Austrian League for the United Nations, the organisation that later became the Austrian Society for Foreign Policy and the United Nations. Its founding purpose, as the magazine's own media information describes it, was connected with bringing the United Nations to Vienna, and for decades it was guided by a circle of ministers and ambassadors. The second strand was the magazine Society, founded in 1992 by Gertrud Tauchhammer. When Tauchhammer took over the publication previously issued by the Foreign Ministry in 1992, the two strands were combined. The combined title was initially called UNO and Society, and in 1999 the name was shortened to Society. That lineage matters because it explains the magazine's unusual blend of diplomatic reporting, foreign-policy context and society coverage, and it distinguishes Society from purely commercial society magazines that were created only to cover celebrity events.

Founder and publisher Gertrud Tauchhammer

Gertrud Tauchhammer is central to any account of Society Magazin, and unusually for a magazine profile, the founder, publisher and owner are the same person. Reference entries record that she founded the magazine in its present form in 1992, that she publishes it, and that the media owner is Tauchhammer KG at one hundred percent. The magazine's own presentation describes her as publisher of Diplomatic SOCIETY and notes roles that underline her diplomatic positioning, including service as an honorary consul and, from 2003, honorary consul general, as stated in its media information. In more recent coverage on the magazine's own website, she appears as owner and publisher hosting receptions, presenting new issues at embassies and moderating the magazine's presence in diplomatic life, while Tanja Tauchhammer is named as editor-in-chief in reports of Society events. Because Society is owner-managed, its editorial identity has remained closely tied to its publisher's personal network in politics, diplomacy, business, science, culture and society over more than three decades. That continuity is a strength in terms of access, but it also means that independent third-party histories of the magazine are scarce, and most detailed claims about its reach and distribution come from the publisher's own media data rather than from audited public sources quoted elsewhere.

What Society covers

The editorial remit of Society is broad but coherent. Reference descriptions summarise its focus as diplomacy, culture, economy and society, together with its own events, in the international sphere with an Austrian reference. Its content reporting covers current affairs in politics, diplomacy, business, culture and science, and each issue carries a country focus, a Länderschwerpunkt, in which a particular country is presented in depth. In practice, as the magazine's website shows day by day, that means interviews with ambassadors newly accredited in Vienna and with Austrian officials, reports from national-day receptions and embassy concerts, features on bilateral business forums, and coverage of cultural evenings, exhibitions and charitable balls. Recent website reports, for example, have covered investment forums, national-day celebrations of states represented in Vienna, and conversations with hotel managers, artists and foreign-policy figures. The mix is deliberate: for a reader in an embassy or a ministry, a country feature that combines politics, economy, culture and society offers useful background in one place, while for Austrian business readers it provides a window onto how Austria is presented to, and perceived by, its international partners.

Vienna as a diplomatic capital

Society cannot be understood apart from Vienna's role as a host city for international organisations. Vienna is one of the headquarters cities of the United Nations and home to a large diplomatic corps, international agencies and permanent missions, as well as to Austria's own foreign ministry and federal institutions. A magazine that reports systematically on that milieu therefore serves a real and specific audience that general news magazines cover only intermittently. Society's cooperation with the Austrian Society for Foreign Policy and the United Nations reinforces that role, and its own media information describes it as the official organ of that society. Its events reporting reflects the calendar of diplomatic Vienna, from New Year and national-day receptions to farewells for departing ambassadors and welcomes for new ones. By documenting who represents which country in Vienna, what priorities ambassadors state in interviews, and how bilateral relations are celebrated in public, the magazine creates a running record of Austria's international presence that has value beyond the moment of publication, including for researchers and for readers who follow Austrian foreign relations professionally.

Format, frequency and production

Society appears quarterly, four times a year, which suits its character as a collected, feature-led magazine rather than a news weekly. It is published and printed in Vienna, in A4 format, measured at 210 by 297 millimetres, and printed by Druckerei Berger, according to its reference entry. Its registered base is in Penzing, Vienna's fourteenth district, while its reporting and events take place across the city's embassy quarter, hotels, concert halls and official venues. The quarterly rhythm allows each issue to be built around its country focus and around longer interviews and reports, rather than around the fast turnover of daily news. Alongside print, the magazine maintains an active website at society.at, where reports appear far more frequently than the print cycle, covering events as they happen and archiving current-issue material across many pages of reports. The website also carries the magazine's newsletter offer and its events coverage, so that the print quarterly and the continuous online reporting together form the complete publication as readers now encounter it.

Readership and distribution as described by the publisher

Because Society is an insider title, its distribution model differs from that of a kiosk magazine. Its own media data describe direct distribution to diplomats, executives and a top, so-called Super-A, readership, including decision-makers in more than two thousand leading companies in Austria and abroad, five-star hotels across Austria, the Vienna Chamber of Commerce, doctors and private hospitals, museums, galleries, theatres and concert houses, and prominent figures from society, fashion and the creative scene. Those figures and categories are the publisher's own description of its mailing and distribution list, and they should be read as such: they have not been independently verified for this profile, and no audited circulation figure for Society is quoted in the reference sources consulted. What can be said with confidence is that the intended readership is narrow, senior and international, and that the magazine is designed to be received by named readers in institutions rather than bought casually. That model explains both its advertising environment, which is oriented toward premium and institutional advertisers, and its editorial tone, which is affirmative and representational rather than investigative or critical.

Events as part of the magazine

A defining feature of Society is that events are not merely reported by the magazine; they are organised and co-hosted by it. Its media information presents an events package that includes invitation concepts, address management, invitation handling, staging and moderation, press follow-up, web presence and its own photographer. On its website, a dedicated own-events strand records presentations of new issues at embassies, champagne brunches, traditional festivals such as Nowruz celebrations hosted with ambassadors, and receptions at which a new country-focused issue is unveiled to the diplomatic community. A documented example is the presentation of an issue focused on Belgium at the Belgian embassy, where the ambassador and the publisher together presented the winter issue to diplomatic and international guests. This events activity blurs the line between publisher and host in a way that is characteristic of diplomatic publishing in Vienna. For readers, it means that Society is both a chronicle of a social-diplomatic world and an active participant in creating the occasions it chronicles, a dual role that should be kept in mind when reading its celebratory coverage.

Editorial character and tone

The tone of Society is consistently positive, ceremonial and relationship-centred. Interviews give ambassadors and executives space to state their priorities at length, event reports name hosts and guests and describe programmes and culinary details, and features present countries in terms of opportunity, culture and friendship with Austria. This is not a magazine that seeks confrontation, scoops or critical investigation, and it does not present itself as one. Its value lies elsewhere: in continuity of coverage of bilateral relationships, in documenting cultural diplomacy, and in giving Austria's international partners a German and English-facing platform in the capital. Readers who need adversarial reporting on Austrian politics will turn to news magazines such as profil or to daily newspapers; readers who need to know how the embassy of a given country marked its national day, what a newly arrived ambassador said about economic ties, or how a cultural institute presented its programme will find that record in Society. Understanding that division of labour is essential to judging the magazine fairly, on the terms it sets for itself.

Society among Austrian magazines

Within the Austrian magazine landscape, Society occupies a niche with few direct competitors. Austria has strong news weeklies, business magazines, women's and lifestyle titles, and a large membership magazine in auto touring, but very few titles devoted specifically to diplomacy and international society in Vienna. Its closest relatives are institutional and membership publications that serve a defined community, rather than commercial newsstand titles competing for the same buyer. Its longevity is notable in that context: a title whose present form dates from 1992, and whose institutional predecessor dates from 1945, has outlasted many more commercial launches of the nineteen-nineties and two-thousands. Its survival rests on its institutional cooperation, its owner-managed structure and its events business as much as on print sales. For a directory of Austrian media, Society is therefore best classified as a quarterly diplomatic and society magazine with an international remit and an Austrian base, rather than as a general society glossy, and its Vienna, Penzing base and Tauchhammer ownership are the fixed points around which its identity is organised.

What is not publicly documented

An honest profile must state its limits. Beyond the founding history, frequency, base, ownership and editorial focus recorded above, detailed independent information about Society is thin. No independently audited circulation or readership figure was found in the sources consulted for this profile, staffing beyond the publisher and the editor-in-chief named in the magazine's own event reports is not comprehensively documented in reference works, and the magazine's financial results are not public. Claims about reach and about the composition of its distribution come from the publisher's media data and are reported here as publisher claims, not as verified facts. Similarly, while the website demonstrates daily activity and a large archive of event reports, a complete bibliographic history of every print issue since 1992 is not publicly available in the sources consulted. Those gaps do not diminish the magazine's documented existence or role, but they do mean that any profile, including this one, should distinguish carefully between what reference sources confirm, what the publisher states, and what remains unrecorded in public.

Why Society matters

Society Magazin matters because it documents, issue by issue and event by event, the international life of Vienna as seen from inside that life. For diplomats arriving in Austria, it is an introduction to the community they are joining; for Austrian readers in business and culture, it is a record of how their country presents itself and is presented by others; and for future readers, its country features and ambassador interviews form an archive of bilateral relationships at particular moments in time. Founded in its present form by Gertrud Tauchhammer in 1992, heir to a United Nations magazine tradition reaching back to 1945 under Karl Renner, published quarterly in Vienna by Tauchhammer KG in cooperation with the Austrian Society for Foreign Policy and the United Nations, Society remains a small but durable institution of Austrian publishing, defined by diplomacy, culture, economy and society in equal measure.