About Für Sie

Für Sie

Für Sie is a German fortnightly women's magazine published in Hamburg. Launched in 1957 by the Jahreszeiten Verlag, it has been one of the long-running titles of the German women's press for nearly seventy years, covering fashion, beauty, recipes, health, relationships and lifestyle for its readers. Since September 2018 it has been published by the Mediengruppe Klambt, after the Jahreszeiten Verlag sold its women's titles in a strategic refocusing. Appearing every two weeks with a sold circulation of 132,571 copies (IVW 4/2025), it remains a fixture of the German magazine rack and a digital brand at fuersie.de. Its editor-in-chief is Tim Affeld.

Overview

Für Sie — styled FÜR SIE, "For Her" — is a fortnightly German-language women's magazine headquartered in Hamburg. It belongs to the classic segment of the German women's press: the advisory magazine for the adult woman, covering the full spectrum of everyday life — fashion and beauty, cooking and nutrition, health and fitness, partnership and family, home and garden, travel and culture. The fortnightly rhythm gives it a place between the weekly gossip press and the monthly glossies: frequent enough to be current, substantial enough to be kept.

The magazine's longevity is its distinction. Founded in 1957, it has been published continuously for nearly seven decades — through the economic miracle, the women's movement, reunification and the digital transformation of the press. It is one of the titles that defined what the German "Frauenzeitschrift" is: not a fashion magazine and not a gossip paper, but the companion for the organized, interested, modern woman's everyday life.

History

The magazine was first published in 1957 by the Jahreszeiten Verlag of Hamburg, the magazine publisher of the Ganske publishing group. The Jahreszeiten Verlag — founded in 1950, part of the Ganske-Verlagsgruppe built by Kurt Ganske after the Second World War around titles such as Merian — positioned Für Sie as its women's magazine, and the title grew steadily in the expanding magazine market of the 1960s. From 1960 to 1970 the editor-in-chief was Heinz Scheibenpflug, who from 1970 onward published the magazine himself — a long editorial tenure that shaped the title's character.

Für Sie marked its fiftieth anniversary in March 2007 with a special anniversary issue — half a century of continuous publication, a rarity in the German magazine market. In November of the same year, issue 25/2007 appeared as a special edition: a flip magazine with a 40-page Für Ihn ("For Him") section, a playful expansion of the brand to the male reader. The sold circulation in 2004 was 480,372 copies — the scale of the German women's press at its peak, when the fortnightly titles reached hundreds of thousands of buyers.

The decisive break in the magazine's history came in September 2018, when the Jahreszeiten Verlag sold the magazine to the Mediengruppe Klambt. The sale was part of a strategic refocusing: at the end of 2018 the Jahreszeiten Verlag separated from its women's magazine segment to concentrate on expanding its premium portfolio — alongside Für Sie, the titles Petra, Vital, Iss' dich gesund, Feel good and Dr. Wimmer were sold to Klambt. From November 2019 to June 2022, Für Sie and its sister title Petra were produced by a joint editorial team led by Sabine Bartels. Since June 2022 the editor-in-chief of the magazine has been Tim Affeld.

The circulation history tells the story of the German print market in miniature: from 480,372 sold copies in 2004 to 132,571 in the fourth quarter of 2025 — a decline of 78.3 percent since 1998 — with a distributed circulation of 141,940. The magazine that once reached half a million buyers now serves a smaller, more deliberate audience — but it is still published every two weeks, still from Hamburg, and still under a title that German women have known for nearly seventy years.

Content

Für Sie's content is the classic women's-magazine mix, executed with the thoroughness of a long-established editorial team. Fashion and beauty form the visual core: trend reporting, styling advice, and beauty guidance for the adult woman rather than the teenage reader. Cooking and nutrition are a second pillar — recipes for the family table, seasonal cooking, and the health-conscious eating that has grown in importance over the decades. Health and fitness, partnership and family life, home and garden, and travel complete the spectrum.

The fortnightly rhythm shapes the journalism: the magazine is current enough to react to seasons, trends and events, but its articles are built to be kept — the recipe collection, the health guide, the decorating ideas. The special editions punctuate the routine: the anniversary issues, the themed specials, and experiments like the 2007 Für Ihn flip issue show an editorial team willing to play with the format. Under the joint editorial operation with Petra (2019–2022) the two titles shared resources while maintaining their distinct identities; since 2022 Für Sie has again had its own editor-in-chief in Tim Affeld.

The tone of the magazine is that of the competent friend: warm, practical, and free of the irony that characterizes younger women's titles. It addresses its readers as adults managing complex lives — work, family, health, home — and offers not aspiration alone but usable help. That positioning, established in the 1960s and maintained through every ownership change, is the reason the title has survived the collapse of print circulations that closed so many of its competitors.

Coverage & Audience

Für Sie covers the German-speaking women's lifestyle market from its Hamburg base, with national distribution across Germany. Its subject is the everyday life of its readers in the round: what to wear, what to cook, how to stay healthy, how to furnish the home, where to travel, how to manage relationships and family. The magazine's authority is practical rather than critical — it is a service medium, and its readers use it as one.

The audience is the adult German woman — the core readership of the classic women's press, established in family and professional life, with the purchasing power that makes the magazine's advertising categories (food, health, beauty, household) work. The documented sold circulation is 132,571 copies (IVW 4/2025), with a distributed circulation of 141,940. The historical comparison — 480,372 sold copies in 2004 — measures both the structural decline of the print market and the loyalty of the remaining readership: more than 130,000 buyers every two weeks, nearly seventy years after the first issue, is a durable audience by any contemporary standard.

Ownership

Für Sie was founded and long published by the Jahreszeiten Verlag GmbH of Hamburg, the magazine publisher of the Ganske-Verlagsgruppe. The Ganske group was built after the Second World War by Kurt Ganske, who founded the Jahreszeiten Verlag for upscale magazines — Merian appeared from June 1948 — and acquired the Hamburg traditional book publisher Hoffmann und Campe; since Kurt Ganske's death in 1979 the group has been led by his son Thomas Ganske, and since 2023 the Jahreszeiten Verlag has been led as CEO by Sebastian Ganske. Under Ganske ownership Für Sie was one of the publisher's women's titles for six decades.

In September 2018 the magazine was sold to the Mediengruppe Klambt, a Hamburg-based media group, as part of the Jahreszeiten Verlag's strategic withdrawal from the women's segment. Klambt is a publisher with deep roots in the women's and entertainment press, and Für Sie has been published from Hamburg by the Klambt group ever since. The editor-in-chief is Tim Affeld, in office since June 2022, succeeding the joint editorial leadership of Sabine Bartels (2019–2022) that had produced Für Sie together with Petra. The ownership change from a general-interest magazine house to a specialist women's-press publisher reflects the consolidation of the German women's segment: fewer, larger publishers serving a smaller but still substantial print audience.

Digital Presence

The magazine's digital home is fuersie.de (the official domain attributed via the German Wikipedia). The website carries the magazine's program into the digital medium: fashion and beauty content, recipes, health advice and lifestyle reporting, updated continuously between the fortnightly print issues. For a title whose print circulation has declined by more than three-quarters since 1998, the digital presence is the growth story — the place where the brand meets readers who no longer buy the fortnightly paper but still trust the name.

The digital strategy follows the magazine's historic logic: service content that is searched, saved and shared — recipes, health guides, styling advice — rather than the news cycle. The brand's social channels extend the reach of the print title's topics, and the website's archive of practical content gives the brand a long digital tail. Nearly seventy years after its founding by the Jahreszeiten Verlag, Für Sie remains what it has always been: the fortnightly companion for its readers' everyday lives — now in print every two weeks and online every day, published in Hamburg by the Mediengruppe Klambt.