In the autumn of 1950, the dispute between "Stern" editor-in-chief Henri Nannen and his best man escalated.

Karl Beckmeier, photo editor and Nannen's deputy, consulted the well-known copyright expert Kurt Bussmann in order to have a legal battle over who deserved the merits for inventing the magazines.

According to Beckmeier's son Michael, bizarre scenes sometimes played out during the negotiation rounds: His mother Ursula Marquardt-Beckmeier, who worked as a graphic designer for "Stern" before the quarrel, asked "Mr. Nannen" to come in Take piece of paper and draw the "star" logo.

Nannen's answer: "I didn't feel like drawing today."

An incomplete line was drawn between the quarrel, which was accompanied by Beckmeier's departure from the "Schwäbische Illustrierte" and his return through the mediation of the "Stern" printer Richard Gruner.

Ursula Marquardt-Beckmeier transferred the unrestricted right to use the logo to the publisher Henri Nannen for a payment of ten thousand marks.

However, the conflict over the overall visual concept of the paper remained unresolved.

Episodes like these shed new light on the founding of “Stern” in 1948. There is probably no other legend in the German post-war press that has more persistence than the one after which Nannen invented what he later developed into the world’s largest illustrated magazine, almost overnight.

Last but not least, his well-documented quirk of glorifying his own past through anecdotes contributed to this.

However, the journalistic brand "Stern" has not only existed since 1948. When the native of Emden founded the magazine three years after the end of the war, the title had already been introduced to the German population.

Ten years earlier there had been a newspaper of the same name in the German Reich.

Promoted to license holder by chance

The "chief editor" of the "old" "Stern" was Kurt Zentner.

From 1934 he had a steep career at Ullstein and at Deutscher Verlag, and as head of the service at the “Berliner Illustrierte” he was responsible for the successful special editions for the 1936 Olympic Games. In the following year, on a study trip through the United States, Zentner collected ideas for an innovative Film and culture magazines.

The "Stern", launched in September 1938, became a bestseller with a circulation of 750,000 copies - and a prime example of National Socialist integration propaganda.

Clumsy agitation was left out, success was brought about by elaborate photo spreads, exclusive reports from the lives of celebrities, serialized novels, humor pages,

Shortly after the beginning of the war, the editor-in-chief Zentner, who had been discredited as a “quarter Jew”, was removed from power and the “Stern” was changed to the soldier’s letter “Erika”.

Max Amann, head of the National Socialist Eher publishing house, had engineered the coup behind the back of his rival Joseph Goebbels.

The propaganda minister expressed surprise and displeasure at the sudden disappearance of the title at an internal press management conference.