The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) is an influential high-quality national German newspaper, founded in 1949. It is published daily in Frankfurt am Main. The Sunday edition is the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. The FAZ has a circulation of over 380,000.

The FAZ has the legal form of a GmbH (see Limited company). The independent FAZIT-Stiftung (FAZIT Foundation) is its majority shareholder, and the paper itself does not depend on any political party or organisation. The FAZ runs its own correspondent network. Its editorial policy is not determined by a single editor, but cooperatively by five editors. It has a daily readership of over one million and is the German newspaper with the widest circulation abroad, with its editors claiming to deliver the newspaper to 148 countries every day.

History

The first edition of the FAZ appeared on November 1, 1949; its founding editor was Erich Welter. Some editors had worked for the Frankfurter Zeitung, which was banned in 1943.

Traditionally, no photographs appear on the title page of the FAZ. Some of the rare exceptions were a picture of the celebrating people in front of the Reichstag in Berlin on the German Unity Day on 4 October 1990, and the two pictures in the edition of 12 September 2001 showing the collapsing World Trade Center and the American president George W. Bush.

Currently the FAZ is produced electronically. For its characteristic comment headings, a digital Fraktur font was ordered. After introducing on August 1, 1999, the new spelling prescribed by the German spelling reform of 1996, the FAZ returned exactly one year later to the old spelling, declaring that their experience had shown that the reform was ambiguous and partly nonsensical. Due to its traditionally sober layout, the introduction of colour photographs in the FAZ was controversially discussed by the readers.

Profile

A major goal of the FAZ is to make its readers think. The truth is sacred to the FAZ, so special care is taken to clearly separate facts from comments. Its political orientation is liberally conservative (as far as such description still makes sense today), but it is not afraid of providing a forum to commentators with different views. In particular the feuilleton and some sections of the Sunday edition can not be said to be specifically conservative or liberal at all. The letters to the editors receive a lot of attention. Its well-grounded articles about law are unofficially considered as compulsory reading among law students.

Famous contributors

• Marcel Reich-Ranicki
• Florian Illies
• Patrick Bahners
• Andreas Platthaus
• Volker Reiche (see Strizz)
• Greser&Lenz
• Karl Feldmeier
• Georg Paul Hefty
• Hans Dietmar Barbier
• Karl Friedrich Fromme (former editor)

External links

• The FAZ online edition (in German; only selected articles are free) (http://www.faz.net)
• F.A.Z. Weekly (English edition) (http://www.faz.com)
• Explanation for the return to the pre-reform spelling (in German) (http://www.tu-berlin.de/fb1/AGiW/Cricetus/SOzuC1/SOVsRSR/ArchivSO/FAZ_7_00.htm)
• Ketupa.net - Frankfurter Zeitung and FAZ (http://www.ketupa.net/faz.htm) media profile