About Südwind-Magazin

Südwind-Magazin

Südwind-Magazin is an Austrian magazine for international politics, culture and development, published in Vienna in German by Südwind, the Austrian development-policy and global-justice organisation. It reports on the countries of the Global South, on development policy and international cooperation, and on what should change in the Global North, and it does so with an editorially independent newsroom that works under its own editorial charter inside a non-profit association. Its reporting is dated by its publisher and by reference works to 1979, which makes it one of the longest-running development magazines in the German-speaking world.

The magazine's stated purpose has remained remarkably consistent across that long life. Its editorial charter, quoted in reference entries on the title, defines its mission as informing the public about the social, political, economic and cultural realities in the countries of the so-called Third World, and about development policy and international cooperation, in the spirit of sustainably reducing the divide between North and South. In its own description it is an undogmatic information and discussion magazine for people who work for more justice between the Global North and the Global South, or who simply want to inform themselves about international subjects that other media treat only at the margins.

Origins in the ÖIE of 1979

The magazine's history is inseparable from the history of its publisher. In 1979 the Austrian Information Service for Development Policy, the Österreichischer Informationsdienst für Entwicklungspolitik or ÖIE, was founded in Austria with the conviction that development policy had to be practised at home, by informing the Austrian public. Church organisations, the Austrian Students' Association, the Europahaus Eisenstadt, youth organisations from both the socialist and conservative camps, and a range of development-policy working groups came together to found it. Reference entries on Südwind date the magazine's reporting to that same year, 1979, and the magazine marked twenty-five years of Südwind with a retrospective that set its beginnings alongside the ÖIE's entry into public debate and the report of the Brandt Commission on North-South relations.

That dating needs one careful qualification, which this profile states openly. The year 1979 is well documented as the start of the ÖIE and of the reporting lineage from which the present magazine descends, and both the German and English reference entries state that the Südwind-Magazin has been reporting since 1979. The name Südwind itself, however, is younger: the organisation worked under the ÖIE name through the 1980s and most of the 1990s, and only took the Südwind name toward the end of the 1990s. Readers should therefore understand 1979 as the documented beginning of the magazine's publishing tradition inside the ÖIE, not as proof that an issue bearing the exact Südwind-Magazin title appeared in that year; the early title history is thin in the publicly available sources consulted for this profile, and no earlier title name is asserted here.

From ÖIE to Südwind: The Publisher's History

Toward the end of the 1990s the ÖIE association was renamed Südwind Entwicklungspolitik, and a non-profit company, the Südwind Agency, was founded alongside it. Südwind's own account of itself notes that it has worked under the Südwind name since 1997, through education work, campaigns and public relations, and through publication of the Südwind-Magazin. In 2015 the non-profit company was dissolved, and since then Südwind has operated legally as an association, the Südwind Verein für Entwicklungspolitik und globale Gerechtigkeit, more strongly anchored in civil society. Through all of these legal and organisational changes, the association's central aim remained the same: to reduce the socio-economic imbalance between the Global North and the Global South through information, education and campaigning work in Austria.

The wider organisation gives the magazine its context. Südwind runs workshops for schools and produces teaching material on global learning and global citizenship education, and it has run public campaigns in Austria for decades, among them Jute statt Plastik in 1979, which urged people to replace plastic bags with jute bags, Hunger ist kein Schicksal in 1980, Stimmen für den Regenwald in 1992, and the Clean Clothes Campaign, which Südwind has coordinated in Austria since 2001 and which campaigns for fair working conditions in the clothing, leather and sporting-goods industries. Südwind is headquartered in Vienna and has regional offices in Vorarlberg, Tyrol, Salzburg, Styria, Upper Austria and Lower Austria, in cities including Dornbirn, Innsbruck, Salzburg, Linz, Wiener Neustadt and Graz. It has held consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council since 2009, and observer status at the UN climate framework convention since 2023.

Publisher, Independence and Editorial Charter

Südwind-Magazin is published by the Südwind association from Laudongasse 40 in Vienna's eighth district, the address given in the magazine's 2025 media data, which names the publisher as Südwind, Verein für Entwicklung und globale Gerechtigkeit. The recorded representatives of the publisher in reference entries are Martin Jäggle, Brigitte Pilz and Erhard Stackl, although those entries rest on the magazine's own older about page and should be read as the documented representatives rather than a guaranteed current masthead. What is structurally important, and consistently described, is the magazine's editorial independence: Südwind's own service description stresses that the magazine is editorially independent, has its own statutes and an editorial board, and is financed mainly by subscriptions and advertisements rather than by project grants.

That independence matters because the magazine is an NGO publication that is expected to behave like journalism. Its charter commits it to a point of view, solidarity with the Global South and the reduction of the North-South divide, but its working method is reportage, analysis and interview rather than organisational publicity. Südwind's English presentation of itself describes the magazine in similar terms, as an editorially independent magazine focusing on international politics, culture and development that highlights global interconnections and their effects. The combination, a declared standpoint with an independent newsroom, is the defining institutional fact about the title.

What the Magazine Covers

The magazine's contents are described in its reference entries as reports, analyses, photo stories and interviews from the countries of the Global South, together with prompts and proposals for change in the Global North; the English entry also mentions comic strips among its forms. A typical issue therefore moves between on-the-ground reportage, background analysis of a conflict, a trade relationship or a climate impact, interviews with people directly affected or working on the subject, and cultural coverage, because culture is one of its three declared fields alongside international politics and development. Its reporting deliberately centres questions and regions that receive only marginal attention elsewhere, which is written into its self-description.

A documented example shows the range. The March-April 2023 issue carried a featured profile and interview with Adil Najam, the Boston University scholar of international relations and environment, on his idea of an Age of Adaptation, the argument that climate change is no longer a future problem but a present reality, prompted in part by the catastrophic 2022 floods in Pakistan, and on the climate-justice question that the countries hit hardest by climate change have contributed least to causing it. The interview, written by Richard Solder, is characteristic of the magazine's method: a global subject, an expert and affected-region perspective, and an explicit connection back to policy and behaviour in the North.

Frequency, Format and Financing

The magazine's frequency has changed over time, and the sources consulted for this profile record more than one rhythm, so they are set out here with their dates rather than merged into a single false precision. Reference entries based on the magazine's older self-description state that it appeared ten times a year with 52 pages per issue, a pattern close to the monthly classification under which the title is listed in the Austrian magazine list, with double issues accounting for the difference. Südwind's English services page has also described the magazine as bi-monthly. The organisation's current presentation is the clearest statement of the present pattern: the Südwind-Magazin reports from all over the world, in its own words from Tierra del Fuego to West Papua, in six print issues a year, supplemented once a month by an email edition called the Extrablatt.

On that current official description, the accurate present-tense summary is six print issues a year plus a monthly digital Extrablatt, and that is how the magazine should now be classified, rather than simply as a monthly. Its financing, as described by Südwind, rests mainly on subscriptions and advertisements, which is unusual for an association magazine and explains the care it takes with distribution and media data. Its 2025 media data lists personally addressed mailing to subscribers as its core distribution, alongside multiple distribution through selected restaurants, cafés and event venues, and sale through selected bookshops and world shops, the fair-trade shops known in Austria as Weltläden.

Distribution and Audience

The magazine defines its intended audience in its own self-description: people who engage themselves for more justice between North and South, and people who want to inform themselves about international topics. In practice that means a readership drawn from Austria's development, church, education and solidarity milieus, teachers and students who encounter Südwind through its global-learning work, subscribers who support the association's aims, and general readers of international affairs who find the magazine in bookshops, world shops and the cafés and venues that carry it. The distribution by federal state set out in its media data confirms that, although it is edited and published in Vienna, it is aimed at readers across Austria, matching the publisher's network of regional offices.

No independently audited circulation or readership figure for Südwind-Magazin was found in the sources consulted for this profile, and none is invented here. For a subscription-financed magazine of this kind, the meaningful indicators are longevity, its place in its publisher's work and its recognition outside its own milieu; Boston University's Pardee School, for example, described it straightforwardly as Austria's leading development magazine when reporting its 2023 interview with its dean emeritus. That external description is a fair measure of the position the title occupies in a small but durable Austrian niche.

Digital Presence and the Extrablatt

The magazine's digital home is suedwind-magazin.at, where its articles are published online alongside the print issues, and the publisher's main site at suedwind.at presents the magazine as one of Südwind's central services, next to its campaigns, its global-learning work and the Südwind Buchwelt bookshops, of which Südwind is a co-owner. The bookshop connection is part of the same ecosystem: the first development-policy bookshop under the Südwind name was founded in Vienna in 1984, and the present Südwind Buchwelt sells literature, world music and fair-trade products from shops in Mariahilfer Straße and Schwarzspanierstraße and online, although it operates independently of the association, which holds only company shares in it.

The monthly Extrablatt email edition is the clearest sign of the magazine's digital adjustment. Rather than abandoning print, Südwind reduced print to six issues a year and filled the gaps with a monthly email product, keeping a monthly rhythm of contact with readers while concentrating print resources on fewer, substantial issues. Its media data also offers advertisers a sponsored presence in the Extrablatt, showing that the digital edition is integrated into the magazine's subscription and advertising financing model rather than treated as a free afterthought.

Editorial Character

Südwind-Magazin calls itself undogmatic, and the word is worth taking seriously as an editorial claim. It is a magazine with a declared side: it exists to narrow the gap between North and South, it reports from the South's perspective, and it asks what the North should do differently, in trade, climate policy, consumption and working conditions along supply chains. Within that commitment it presents itself as an information and discussion resource rather than a party or campaign organ, publishing analysis and argument that its readers are expected to weigh. Its slogan-level summary on the publisher's site is quality journalism with a wide horizon, and its geographic boast, from Tierra del Fuego to West Papua, signals that breadth of reporting ambition is itself part of its identity.

Its cultural coverage belongs to the same character. By treating culture as one of its three fields, the magazine presents literature, music and everyday life in the countries it covers as subjects in their own right, not as decoration for development reporting. That is one reason its contents include interviews, photo stories and comics alongside policy analysis: the aim is to make the social, political, economic and cultural reality of other parts of the world intelligible and present to an Austrian readership, in the charter's own terms.

Place in Austrian Media

Within Austria's media landscape, Südwind-Magazin occupies a position with few equivalents: a nationally distributed, German-language magazine devoted entirely to international politics, development and the Global South, published continuously, in its reporting lineage, since 1979 by a non-profit association rather than a commercial house. Austria's general news magazines cover development episodically; Südwind-Magazin covers nothing else, and it has outlived many commercial titles while doing so. It also functions as the publishing arm of a wider civic infrastructure, alongside Südwind's school workshops, campaigns such as Clean Clothes, its regional information libraries and its bookshops.

For readers outside Austria, the essential facts are these. Südwind-Magazin is published in Vienna by the Südwind association, whose predecessor, the ÖIE, was founded in 1979 by church, student, youth and development organisations, took the Südwind name in the late 1990s and has operated as an association since 2015. The magazine's editors are independent under their own charter and statutes, it is financed mainly by subscriptions and advertisements, and it currently appears in six print issues a year with a monthly email Extrablatt, after an earlier pattern of ten 52-page issues a year recorded in reference works. Where the record is thin, above all on the magazine's earliest title history before the Südwind name and on audited circulation, this profile says so openly rather than presenting the 1979 lineage or any figure as more precise than the sources allow.