About Männer

Männer

Männer was a German lifestyle magazine for gay men, published monthly in Berlin by the Bruno Gmünder Verlag from 1987 to 2017. For thirty years it was the leading title of Germany's commercial gay press: a non-pornographic magazine with artistic and erotic male photography, devoted to current political issues and the gay Zeitgeist. Between 1989 and 2007 it appeared under the title Männer aktuell; the last print issue appeared in March 2017. Since 2019 the brand has continued online as männer*, the digital magazine of the blu media network for Germany's LGBTIQ* community and the umbrella site of the queer city magazines hinnerk, blu, GAB, rik and Leo. Its website is maenner.media.

Overview

Männer — ISSN 0935-8838 — was a monthly German-language lifestyle magazine for gay men, published in Berlin. Its program combined two elements that defined its market position: it was free of pornography but carried artistic and erotic male photography and nudes, and it devoted itself primarily to current political topics and the themes of the gay Zeitgeist. That combination — the serious political magazine in the form of the beautiful men's magazine — made it the leading title of the German commercial gay press for three decades.

The magazine's history mirrors the history of gay emancipation in Germany: founded in the late 1980s, in the shadow of the AIDS crisis; renamed and repositioned in the 1990s; returned to its original name in the 2000s; and finally, in 2017, closed in print as the economics of the gay print market collapsed — only to be reborn in 2019 as a digital magazine for the broader LGBTIQ* community. The print run is history; the brand continues online.

History

The magazine was established in 1987 in Berlin by the Bruno Gmünder Verlag. The founding year places it in a specific historical moment: the gay community in Germany was organizing itself in the face of the AIDS epidemic — in 1983 physicians, journalists, bar owners and Bruno Gmünder himself had founded the Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe — and the gay press was one of the community's central institutions. The first issue of Männer appeared in that year; conceptually slightly revised, the magazine appeared from 1989 under the name Männer aktuell, and in October 2007 it returned to its original title.

The Bruno Gmünder Verlag itself was the product of the same movement. Founded in Berlin, it grew by advertising in the scene's own media, distributing flyers and building a mail-order business; the annual Spartacus gay travel guide, taken into the publishing program in 1986, sold 1.5 million copies by 2006. From 1987 the publisher oriented itself internationally, and in the same year the first issue of Männer appeared. In 1988 the Bruno's shop opened in Berlin — by 2006 there were two each in Berlin and Cologne and one each in Hamburg and Munich. In June 2011 Bruno Gmünder sold the majority of his shares in the company to Tino Henn, Nik Reis and Michael Taubenheim.

The editorial leadership of the magazine in its final years reflected its political ambition. From 2011 to 2013 the editor-in-chief was the musicologist Kevin Clarke; from 2013 to 2015 it was the theologian David Berger. At the end of 2014 the AIDS association Aids-Hilfe publicly denounced discriminatory remarks by Berger in the pages of Männer — a controversy, reported by Die Welt, that showed the magazine's role as a forum where the community argued with itself. The editor-in-chief named in the magazine's final period was Kriss Rudolph.

In March 2017 the print edition was discontinued: the last issue of Männer appeared in March 2017, after thirty years of monthly publication. The closure was reported across the gay press — the end of the leading title of Germany's commercial gay print market, a victim of the same digital transformation that closed print titles across all segments. The sold circulation in the final years was around 8,000 copies; the English Wikipedia records a circulation of 24,000 in 2007 — the trajectory of the segment in two numbers.

The brand did not die with the print edition. Since 2019, männer* has been online as a digital magazine with a focus on news, culture and travel for Germany's LGBTIQ* community — and as the umbrella page (Dachseite) of the online editions of the queer city magazines hinnerk (Hamburg), blu (Berlin/Munich), GAB (Frankfurt/Rhine-Main), rik (Cologne) and Leo, operated by the blu media network GmbH. The asterisk in the name marks the expanded remit: from the gay men's magazine to the magazine of the whole LGBTIQ* community.

Content

The print magazine's content rested on the combination that defined its market leadership: artistic and erotic male photography — explicitly non-pornographic, but with nudes and erotic imagery as a matter of course — and serious journalism on current political topics and the gay Zeitgeist. The magazine covered the politics that affected gay life: anti-discrimination law, the AIDS response, partnership and marriage equality, the situation of gay men internationally. It covered culture — film, literature, music, photography — with the authority of a magazine whose editors included a musicologist and a theologian. And it covered the scene itself: the bars, the parties, the travel, the everyday life of the community.

The notable writers named in the magazine's history — Kevin Clarke, Peter Rehberg, Frank Herrmann, Jürgen Bienieck, Thilo Keller — indicate the intellectual level at which the magazine operated. This was not a listings magazine with pictures; it was a magazine of record for a community that had few other national media. The controversies it hosted — including the 2014 dispute over David Berger's remarks — were community controversies, argued in the community's own leading medium.

The digital männer* continues the journalism in a new form: news, culture and travel for the LGBTIQ* community, published online and networked with the queer city magazines whose online editions it umbrellas. The shift from the monthly print magazine for gay men to the digital magazine for the LGBTIQ* community reflects both the economics of the media market and the evolution of the community itself.

Coverage & Audience

The print Männer covered gay life in Germany with a national reach from its Berlin base — politics, culture, and community life, photographed and reported for a gay male readership. Its authority was national: as the leading title of the commercial gay press, it was the magazine the community read to know what the community was thinking. The documented circulation figures — 24,000 in 2007, around 8,000 sold in the final years — describe a print audience that shrank with the segment.

The digital männer* addresses the broader German LGBTIQ* community: news, culture and travel, published online from the blu media network, and serving as the umbrella for the online editions of the queer city magazines hinnerk, blu, GAB, rik and Leo — Hamburg, Berlin and Munich, Frankfurt/Rhine-Main, Cologne. The audience is no longer defined as gay men alone but as the LGBTIQ* community in its diversity, and the medium is no longer the monthly print magazine but the continuously updated website. Current audience figures for the digital edition are not publicly confirmed.

Ownership

The print magazine was published by the Bruno Gmünder Verlag of Berlin, the gay publishing house founded around Bruno Gmünder — the publisher who had co-founded the Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe in 1983 and built a publishing and retail empire (books, the Spartacus guide, the Bruno's shops) serving the gay community. The magazine appeared under the titles Männer (1987–1989, 2007–2017) and Männer aktuell (1989–2007). In June 2011 Gmünder sold the majority of his shares to Tino Henn, Nik Reis and Michael Taubenheim, with Henn becoming chairman of the management.

The digital continuation is operated by the blu media network GmbH, the publisher network behind the queer city magazines. As the umbrella site of hinnerk, blu, GAB, rik and Leo, männer* sits within a networked publishing structure: the city magazines serve their local communities in print and online, and männer* provides the national digital roof — news, culture and travel for the LGBTIQ* community across Germany. The ownership history is thus the history of the gay press itself: from the movement-founded independent publisher of the 1980s to the networked digital publisher of today.

Digital Presence

The digital home of the brand is maenner.media (the official domain attributed via the German Wikipedia; the domain could not be fetched directly from this working environment, so live availability is attributed rather than directly verified here). The site publishes männer* as the online magazine for Germany's LGBTIQ* community — news, culture, travel — and functions as the umbrella page for the online editions of the queer city magazines hinnerk, blu, GAB, rik and Leo.

The digital presence is the brand's second life. The print magazine closed in March 2017 after thirty years; since 2019 the asterisked successor has carried the name forward online, in the network of the blu media network. For the history of the German gay press, the continuity matters: the leading title of the commercial gay press did not disappear but transformed — from the monthly Männer of the Bruno Gmünder Verlag, Berlin, 1987–2017, to the digital männer* of the LGBTIQ* community, still reporting the news, the culture and the Zeitgeist, now on screen.