About Mare

Mare

Mare – Die Zeitschrift der Meere is a German bimonthly magazine devoted to the seas and oceans, published in Hamburg by the mareverlag. Founded in 1997 by Nikolaus Gelpke, it is one of the most distinctive magazines in German publishing: a journal of the sea that combines reportage, essays, photography and literature about the oceans — their nature, their cultures, their economies, their politics and their poetics. Appearing every two months, Mare addresses readers who share the founder's conviction that the sea deserves its own magazine: not a sailing magazine, not a diving magazine, but a magazine of the sea itself. Its publisher's home is mare.de, and the brand extends into books (mareverlag), television (mareTV) and radio (MareRadio).

Overview

Mare occupies a singular position in German publishing: the magazine of the seas. Where the sailing magazines serve the sport and the travel magazines touch the coasts, Mare takes the ocean as its subject in the fullest sense — the marine world, the seafaring cultures, the ports and the islanders, the fishermen and the scientists, the literature and the art of the sea. The magazine's pages carry long-form reportage from the world's coasts and oceans, essays on the sea's meanings, photography of the marine world and the occasional fiction: the sea as nature, as workplace, as metaphor.

The Hamburg home is the magazine's natural base: the port city, the Speicherstadt warehouses where the mareverlag resides, the maritime tradition that shapes the city's identity. The publisher's address — the historic Sandthorquaihof in the Speicherstadt — is itself a statement: the magazine of the sea, published in the brick warehouses of the old port, among the canals and the cranes. The bimonthly rhythm gives each issue the character of a collected volume: to be read slowly, like the sea itself.

History

Mare was founded by Nikolaus Gelpke, who published the first issue on 9 April 1997. Gelpke's vision — a magazine devoted entirely to the sea, in the German quality-magazine tradition — was a publishing gamble: the subject was vast, the audience unproven, the format ambitious. The early issues established the magazine's character: the long reportage, the literary ambition, the photography, the refusal of the service-journalism formulas. The magazine found its readers — the sea-lovers, the sailors, the coastal dwellers, the intellectually curious — and grew into one of German publishing's most respected titles.

The brand's extension into other media followed. On 1 February 2001, mareTV began — the television magazine about the sea, produced in cooperation with the NDR (Norddeutscher Rundfunk), bringing the magazine's subjects to the screen. In 2004, MareRadio followed — the radio programme about the sea, produced with Bremen Zwei (Radio Bremen), carrying the magazine's voice to the airwaves. The mareverlag's book publishing — the mare books, the maritime literature — extended the brand into the book market. The sea, it turned out, could sustain a media house.

The founder's era ended in 2025, when Nikolaus Gelpke stepped back from the publisher's leadership after nearly three decades. On 2 January 2026, the publisher was converted into a cooperative — the mareverlag eG — a remarkable step in German publishing: the readers and supporters becoming the owners, the magazine's independence secured by the cooperative form. The editors-in-chief Karl Spurzem and Dimitri Ladischensky lead the editorial work, continuing the founder's vision with the cooperative's backing.

Content

Each bimonthly issue is built around the sea: the cover story — typically a major reportage from the world's oceans or coasts — leads the issue, followed by the departments. The reportages take readers to the fishing grounds and the container ports, the coral reefs and the Arctic ice, the island cultures and the megacities' waterfronts. The essays reflect on the sea's meanings — the philosophical, the literary, the political. The photography presents the marine world with the visual ambition the subject demands. And the literature — the occasional story, the poem — honours the sea's place in the imagination.

The magazine's subjects span the sea's realities: marine nature and conservation, the overfishing crisis and the ocean's pollution, the shipping industry and the port economies, the seafaring professions and the coastal communities, the science of the oceans and the politics of the high seas. Mare reports the sea's crises with the seriousness they deserve — the magazine's environmental reporting is among its most important contributions — while celebrating the sea's beauty and the cultures it sustains.

The brand's books — the mareverlag's maritime literature, the novels and the non-fiction of the sea — extend the magazine's literary ambition. mareTV and MareRadio carry the subjects to the screen and the airwaves: the television magazine's documentaries, the radio programme's features, each in the Mare spirit.

Coverage & Audience

Mare is sold throughout Germany, Austria and Switzerland at newsstands and by subscription, appearing every two months. Its readership is the sea-interested public in the broadest sense: sailors and coastal dwellers, travellers and nature-lovers, the intellectually curious who share the magazine's conviction that the sea matters. The magazine's distinctive character — the literary quality, the visual ambition, the seriousness — gives it a loyal, engaged audience that extends beyond the maritime world.

The brand's cultural standing is unique: Mare is the magazine Germans give as gifts, the title that represents the sea in the national imagination. Its awards and its reputation — the respect of the publishing industry, the loyalty of its readers — testify to the founder's gamble vindicated: the sea did deserve its own magazine, and the German public proved willing to read it.

Ownership

Since 2 January 2026, the mareverlag has been organised as a cooperative — the mareverlag eG — with the readers and supporters as members. The cooperative form secures the magazine's independence: the publisher answers to its community rather than to investors, and the editorial mission — the magazine of the sea — is protected by the ownership structure. The founder Nikolaus Gelpke led the publisher until 2025; the editors-in-chief Karl Spurzem and Dimitri Ladischensky continue the editorial work.

The cooperative conversion is a landmark in German independent publishing: the community ownership model, more familiar from the taz newspaper, applied to the quality magazine. For Mare's readers, the cooperative is an invitation: to own a share of the magazine of the sea, and to secure its future.

Digital Presence

mare.de is the brand's digital home: the magazine's articles, the mareverlag's books, the mareTV and MareRadio programmes, the shop and the subscriptions. The website serves the magazine's community — the readers, the cooperative members, the sea-interested public — with the brand's characteristic depth and visual quality. The newsletters and the social-media channels extend the sea's stories to the digital audience.

The digital strategy's logic is the magazine's traditional one: the sea's stories, well told, find their readers across the platforms. The cooperative's digital presence — the member community, the online shop, the programme archives — builds the infrastructure of the reader-owned publisher. For the magazine of the sea, the digital age offers what the founder's 1997 gamble could not have imagined: the global community of sea-lovers, connected through the Hamburg magazine's pixels as well as its pages.

The cooperative conversion of 2 January 2026 — the mareverlag eG — is the landmark: the readers and supporters becoming the owners, the magazine's independence secured by the community ownership — the taz model applied to the quality magazine. The founder's era — Nikolaus Gelpke's 1997 launch, the nearly three decades of the sea magazine's growth, the 2025 step-back — is the institutional memory: the publishing gamble vindicated, the vision realised. The brand extensions — mareTV since 2001 with the NDR, MareRadio since 2004 with Bremen Zwei, the mareverlag's books — make the sea a media house: the television documentaries, the radio features, the maritime literature. The Speicherstadt home — the Hamburg warehouses, the Sandthorquaihof, the port city's brick maritime heritage — is the statement: the magazine of the sea, published where the sea meets the city. The bimonthly rhythm gives each issue the collected-volume character: to be read slowly, like the sea itself. In German publishing, Mare is the singular: the journal of the seas — the reportage, the essays, the photography, the literature of the ocean — serving the readers who share the conviction that the sea deserves its own magazine.