About Wiener

Wiener

Wiener is a German-language monthly men's magazine published in Vienna, Austria. It has been in circulation since 1979, when it was created by Gert Winkler, and it is based in Vienna, in the federal state of Vienna. Published monthly, eleven times a year in its mature form, Wiener began as a magazine about Vienna and its cultural scene, famous for an avant-garde visual style, and later developed into a men's fashion and lifestyle magazine featuring interviews and articles about celebrities and trends. Its current editor-in-chief, Franz J. Sauer, has held the role since 2015. Few European men's magazines can match its longevity: founded before the modern men's lifestyle category was fully formed internationally, Wiener has chronicled Viennese and Austrian male life for more than four and a half decades.

The magazine's publishing details, as recorded in reference listings, are Wiener Verlags as publisher, with the company Josel and Sauer GmbH associated with its recent operation, in Vienna, in German. Its endurance through several ownership and editorial eras, a bankruptcy after its first four issues, a relaunch in 1980, and successive reinventions from city culture magazine to men's lifestyle title, makes Wiener as much a document of Vienna's post-war cultural history as a commercial magazine. This profile sets out the verified outline of that history, its founding, its visual reputation, its editors, its change of scope and its present form.

Founded in 1979 by Gert Winkler

Wiener was established in 1979 by Gert Winkler together with Günther Lebisch and Michael Satke. The first issue was published on 1 September 1979, dated in reference listings as 1 September 1979. The launch was not smooth. After four issues the magazine had to declare bankruptcy, an abrupt end that might have closed the story. Instead, in May 1980, Gert Winkler relaunched the magazine, now supported by Hans Schmid, the owner of the advertising agency GGK Wien. The founding art directors of the second Wiener were Michael Beran and Lo Breier, and the first editor-in-chief was Rudolph J. Wojta.

The relaunch structure is characteristic of the Viennese creative economy of the period: a magazine sustained by an advertising agency owner's backing, art-directed by designers who became central figures in Austrian visual culture, and edited for a readership defined initially by the city itself. Wiener's subject at launch was not men in general but Vienna: its cultural scene, its people and its self-image at the end of the 1970s, when the city was emerging from post-war provincialism into a new period of artistic confidence. That Viennese specificity remained in the title itself, which simply names the male inhabitant of Vienna.

Avant-Garde Style and Photography

Wiener became famous for its avant-garde style. Reference accounts credit fashion and portrait photographers Gerhard Heller and Elfie Semotan, and street photographers Paul Schirnhofer and Götz Schrage, with creating that style. Elfie Semotan went on to become one of Austria's most celebrated photographers, and her association with Wiener's early years underlines the magazine's role as a platform where Austrian photography and design could operate at an international level. The magazine's pages were conceived visually, with photography and art direction treated as content in their own right rather than as illustration of text.

Right at the magazine's launch, a series about Viennese Actionism caused a scandal. Viennese Actionism, the radical performance art movement of the 1960s associated with artists such as Günter Brus, Otto Muehl and Hermann Nitsch, remained provocative material in 1979, and Wiener's decision to feature it signalled that the new magazine intended to engage seriously, and riskily, with Austria's avant-garde inheritance. For a commercial monthly to open with such material announced both cultural ambition and a willingness to unsettle its own potential advertisers and readers, a posture that shaped the magazine's early reputation in Vienna's cultural world.

From City Magazine to Men's Lifestyle Title

Initially Wiener carried articles on Vienna and its cultural scene. Over time, the magazine changed its scope and became a men's fashion and lifestyle magazine. In its mature form it is published monthly, eleven times per year, and features interviews and articles about celebrities and trends. The transition mirrors the international development of men's magazines in the 1980s and 1990s, when titles in many countries moved from general interest toward fashion, grooming, watches, cars, travel and celebrity interviews addressed specifically to male consumers, supported by luxury and fashion advertising.

Wiener's version of that transition retained a Viennese accent. Style, culture, society and city life, the subjects named in directory descriptions of the magazine, remained connected: a Wiener men's magazine could treat fashion as part of a wider urban culture that included art, music, gastronomy and nightlife, rather than as clothing alone. That blend distinguishes it from a pure fashion title and from the member and motoring magazines with which it shares parts of the Austrian male audience. It is best categorised, as reference listings categorise it, simply as a men's magazine, monthly, from Vienna.

Editors-in-Chief Across Four Decades

The sequence of Wiener's editors-in-chief is unusually well documented and reads as a cross-section of Austrian magazine journalism. After founding editor Rudolph J. Wojta, the role passed to Franz Manola in 1982, then to Michael Hopp and Markus Peichl jointly from 1982 to 1985. Gerd Leitgeb edited the magazine from 1987 to 1994, followed by Wolfgang Höllrigl from 1994, Andreas Wollinger from 1997 to 1999, and Peter Mosser from 2000 to 2006. Alexander Macheck served from 2006 to 2008, Maximilian Mondel and then Gundi Bittermann across 2008 and 2009, Helfried Bauer from 2009, and Wolfgang Wieser from 2010 to 2015.

Franz J. Sauer has been editor-in-chief since 2015. His long tenure, now spanning a decade, gives the current Wiener a stability that contrasts with the rapid editorial turnover of its middle years. The company name Josel and Sauer GmbH in recent listings reflects the magazine's later publishing structure under his era. A list of editors is more than administrative detail for a magazine like Wiener: each editor rebalanced the mixture of culture, fashion and celebrity, and the documented succession allows historians of Austrian media to date the magazine's phases with unusual precision.

Vienna as Subject and Identity

No account of Wiener is complete without the city in its name. Vienna in 1979, when the magazine appeared, was a capital regaining cultural self-confidence, with a growing fashion scene, a respected art world and a population negotiating between imperial heritage and modern European identity. Wiener addressed the men of that city as participants in its culture, not merely as consumers. Exhibition histories of Austrian fashion have singled out Wiener copies as documents of the moment Vienna achieved its breakthrough in the 1980s, when Austrian designers began to win international attention and the magazine recorded and promoted that development.

The magazine's coverage of Viennese Actionism, its use of the city's best photographers and its interviews with cultural figures all served the same function: to make Vienna legible to itself as a modern creative capital. Later, as a men's lifestyle magazine, it continued to mediate between Vienna and wider trends, presenting international fashion and celebrity culture to an Austrian readership through a Viennese editorial sensibility. That dual role, chronicler of the city and importer of the world, is the thread connecting the avant-garde city magazine of 1979 with the lifestyle title of today.

Publishing Details and Frequency

Wiener is a monthly magazine, appearing eleven times a year, published in Vienna in German. Reference listings name the publisher as Wiener Verlags and the company as Josel and Sauer GmbH, with Franz J. Sauer as editor-in-chief. Its founder is recorded as Gert Winkler. The magazine does not publish the kind of audited circulation series in open sources that some larger Austrian titles do, and this profile therefore makes no claim about its current circulation. Its significance is cultural and historical as much as commercial: a paid monthly that has survived since 1979 in one of the most competitive segments of magazine publishing.

The magazine's survival itself deserves analysis. Men's lifestyle was among the categories most disrupted by digital media, as fashion, fitness and celebrity content moved to free online and social platforms and many international men's titles closed or shrank. A Viennese monthly founded in 1979, relaunched in 1980 after bankruptcy, and still publishing under an editor installed in 2015, represents an exceptional case of continuity. Local identity is the most plausible explanation the record supports: a magazine named for its city's inhabitants, rooted in its cultural scene, had a defensible niche that globalised digital content could not simply replicate.

Wiener in the Austrian Magazine Landscape

In the Austrian magazine list, Wiener appears in the monthly nationwide section, a long-running men's title among general and special-interest monthlies. Its neighbours in the market include women's titles such as Woman, Wienerin and Madonna, motoring titles such as Autorevue and auto touring, and the city magazine Wien live, which addresses Vienna as a whole rather than men specifically. Wiener's distinction within that landscape is the combination of seniority and gendered address: it was serving Austrian male readers as a lifestyle audience before most of its current competitors existed.

It also belongs to Vienna's documented newspaper and magazine history, where it is listed among the city's notable periodicals. For media historians, the magazine offers a continuous vantage point on Austrian masculinity, fashion and urban culture from 1979 onward: what Viennese men were told to wear, admire, drive, drink and aspire to, decade by decade, recorded by editors whose names and dates are known. Few Austrian magazines provide so long and so well-attributed a run on a single audience.

What This Profile Can and Cannot Verify

The verified record for Wiener is comparatively strong on founding and editorship: founded in 1979 by Gert Winkler with Günther Lebisch and Michael Satke, first issue 1 September 1979, bankruptcy after four issues, relaunch in May 1980 backed by Hans Schmid of GGK Wien, art directors Michael Beran and Lo Breier, first editor Rudolph J. Wojta, an avant-garde reputation built by photographers including Gerhard Heller, Elfie Semotan, Paul Schirnhofer and Götz Schrage, an early scandal over Viennese Actionism coverage, a later evolution into a men's fashion and lifestyle monthly appearing eleven times a year, and editorship by Franz J. Sauer since 2015.

Thinner areas include audited circulation, ownership transactions between the documented publishing structures, and detailed accounts of individual editorial campaigns after the founding period. This profile states those limits openly rather than filling them with plausible invention. For current commercial information, the publisher's own media data is the appropriate source. For the directory record, Wiener stands as documented: Vienna's men's magazine since 1979, a monthly in German from Vienna, born in the city's cultural scene, famous first for avant-garde photography and later for men's fashion, lifestyle, interviews and trends.