About Damals

Damals

Damals – Das Magazin für Geschichte is a German monthly history magazine published by the Konradin Mediengruppe. Founded in 1969 by the journalist Hans Rempel, it is the oldest continuously published popular history magazine in the German language, presenting the history of humanity — from prehistory to the contemporary era — in accessible, well-illustrated features. Appearing monthly with an annual special edition, Damals serves the history-interested general reader with the seriousness of a specialist publication and the readability of a popular magazine. The magazine's publisher is Katja Kohlhammer, and the editor-in-chief since September 2024 is Anna Joisten. Its web domain damals.de is attributed to the title in reference sources but could not be independently verified for this profile; it is noted here rather than listed as the official website.

Overview

Damals occupies the classic popular-history position in German publishing: the monthly magazine that brings the past to life for the interested general reader. Where the academic journals speak to historians and the newsweeklies treat history as background, Damals makes history the subject — the event, the epoch, the personality, the everyday life of the past, presented in features written by historians and history journalists with narrative skill and rich illustration. The magazine's subtitle, "Das Magazin für Geschichte", is the programme: the magazine for history, in the full sense.

The Konradin publishing home gives the title the specialist-publisher stability its longevity required. The Leinfelden-Echterdingen-based publishing house — the home of Bild der Wissenschaft and Natur alongside Damals — maintains the magazine with the long-term commitment of a family-influenced specialist publisher, and the title's more than five decades of continuous publication testify to the strategy's success.

History

Damals was founded in 1969 by Hans Rempel, the journalist who recognised that the German public's interest in history deserved a dedicated popular magazine. The late 1960s — the era of the student movement, the coming-to-terms with the Nazi past, the democratisation of historical consciousness — were a fertile moment for the launch: history was becoming a public matter, and a magazine that presented it accessibly found its audience. Rempel's founding vision — history as narrative, the past as story — shaped the magazine's character from the start.

Through the decades Damals documented the great public-history moments of the era: the anniversaries that structured German historical consciousness — the wars, the revolutions, the founding moments — and the broadening of the historical gaze to everyday life, women's history, colonial history and the global past. The magazine accompanied the professionalisation of public history — the museums, the memorials, the history on television — with the print magazine's distinctive contribution: the long, well-illustrated feature, the historian's essay, the carefully researched narrative.

The Konradin era brought the specialist publisher's resources and the long-term perspective. The magazine's rhythm — the monthly issue plus the annual Sonderband (special volume) and the Bildband (picture volume) — gives the title its structure: the monthly current of historical features, and the annual specials that explore the great themes in book-like depth. The publisher Katja Kohlhammer and the editor-in-chief Anna Joisten, who took over the editorial leadership in September 2024, represent the magazine's present: the continuation of the founding mission with contemporary historical consciousness.

Content

Each monthly issue presents history across the epochs: the cover story — typically a major event, personality or epoch — leads the issue, followed by the features. Ancient history, the Middle Ages, the early modern period, the 19th and 20th centuries, contemporary history — the periods rotate through the issues, with the emphasis on the narrative and the human. Archaeology, cultural history, military history, the history of everyday life — the approaches vary, but the storytelling remains central.

The authors include historians and history journalists — the professional narrators of the past — and the magazine's features are written to be read with pleasure: the vivid scene, the telling detail, the well-chosen quotation. Photography, historical illustrations, maps and infographics carry the visual narrative: the past made visible. The annual Sonderband and the Bildband extend the format: the special volume exploring a great theme in depth, the picture volume presenting history through its images.

The magazine's treatment of German history's difficult chapters — the Nazi era, the Holocaust, the divided Germany — reflects the publication's historical responsibility: the serious, unsparing, historically accurate presentation of the past, in the tradition of German public history at its best. Damals's readers expect nothing less, and the magazine delivers it with the historian's rigour and the journalist's clarity.

Coverage & Audience

Damals is sold throughout Germany, Austria and Switzerland at newsstands and by subscription, appearing monthly with the annual specials. Its readership is the history-interested general public: the educated reader who follows the past with curiosity, the teacher, the student, the museum-goer. The magazine's accessibility — the narrative prose, the rich illustration, the absence of academic jargon — addresses the broad history-interested audience, while its historical accuracy satisfies the demanding reader.

The brand's more-than-five-decade history gives it a unique authority: Damals is the history magazine generations grew up with, the monthly that made the past vivid. For German public history, the title is the classic popular magazine — the counterpart to the television documentary and the museum exhibition, the print medium of historical narrative.

Ownership

Damals is published by the Konradin Mediengruppe of Leinfelden-Echterdingen, the specialist publishing house. The publisher Katja Kohlhammer represents the publishing house's commitment to the title, and the editor-in-chief Anna Joisten, in office since September 2024, leads the editorial work. The Konradin group's knowledge-magazine cluster — Damals for history, Bild der Wissenschaft for science, Natur for nature — gives the publisher its distinctive profile: the specialist house for the curious reader.

The family-influenced publishing house's long-term orientation is the foundation of the magazine's longevity: a title built over five decades, serving a loyal readership with the consistency that only the specialist publisher's patience allows. In the German magazine market's turbulence, Damals's survival is the Konradin strategy's vindication.

Digital Presence

The brand's digital presence is attributed to damals.de, though the domain could not be independently verified at the time of writing. The magazine's digital strategy follows the knowledge-magazine pattern: the website's articles, the archive, the newsletters and the social-media presence serving the online history-interested audience, while the monthly print magazine provides the curated, illustrated reading experience.

The digital challenge for the history monthly is the internet's abundance of historical content — the Wikipedia article, the documentary stream, the history podcast — against which the magazine must offer its distinctive value: the curated narrative, the historian's authority, the visual storytelling. Damals's five decades of making history vivid give it the standing to meet the challenge: the magazine for history, in print and pixels, since 1969.

The annual specials give the magazine its book-like dimension: the Sonderband exploring a great historical theme in depth, the Bildband presenting history through its images — the collector's volumes that complement the monthly rhythm. The editorial leadership — publisher Katja Kohlhammer, editor-in-chief Anna Joisten since September 2024 — represents the magazine's present: the continuation of Hans Rempel's 1969 founding mission with contemporary historical consciousness. The German history-magazine market provides the context: the popular history titles, the television documentaries, the museum exhibitions — and Damals's position as the classic monthly, the print medium of historical narrative. The magazine's anniversaries structure the historical year: the great commemorations — the wars, the revolutions, the founding moments — covered with the seriousness the occasions demand. The treatment of the difficult chapters — the Nazi era, the Holocaust, the divided Germany — reflects the publication's responsibility: the unsparing, accurate presentation, in the tradition of German public history at its best. For the history-interested reader, Damals remains what it has been since 1969: the magazine that makes the past vivid, month after month, with the historian's rigour and the storyteller's art.