Die Weltbühne
Die Weltbühne (The World Stage) was a German weekly magazine about politics, art and the economy. It started in Berlin in 1905 as Die Schaubühne, a theater magazine founded by Siegfried Jacobsohn after a plagiarism controversy. In 1913 it began to cover politics and business and became a leading voice of the German left for about twenty years. It changed its name to Die Weltbühne on 4 April 1918. After Jacobsohn’s death in 1926, Kurt Tucholsky led the magazine for a while, and in 1927 Carl von Ossietzky became editor.
The Nazi Party banned the publication soon after coming to power, and the last issue appeared on 7 March 1933. The magazine continued in exile as Die neue Weltbühne (The New World Stage) until 1939. After World War II, it appeared again in East Berlin under its original name and lasted until 1993. Later magazines Ossietzky (since 1997) and Das Blättchen (1998) followed in its tradition.
Die Weltbühne was a small red weekly that served as a forum for the radical-democratic bourgeois left in the Weimar Republic. About 2,500 authors wrote for it between 1905 and 1933, including many famous writers and journalists such as Jacobsohn, Tucholsky and Ossietzky. Its influence came from strong reporting, like exposing the Feme murders by the Black Reichswehr and the Reichswehr’s secret rearmament, which led to the Weltbühne Trial.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 06:42 (CET).