After the first democratic election in March 1990, there was freedom of the press in the GDR for the first time. The West German Burda-Verlag also tried to gain a foothold in the East German market with its newly founded magazine Superillu. In the summer of 1990, twenty journalists moved into their new editorial offices in the Mollstraße in East Berlin. Half of them came from the GDR, the other half from the Federal Republic. The Wall had fallen the year before, but Germany was not yet reunited. Only a few months earlier, the Allgemeine Deutsche Nachrichtendienst, ADN, had resided in the same building. This GDR news agency announced what leading GDR politicians wanted to disseminate. There was no freedom of the press in the GDR.
Bulky headlines celebrating the supposed successes of socialism were common. Thus, on October 7, 1989, one month before the fall of the Wall, the SED party organ "Neues Deutschland", in English "New Germany", ran the following headline on the 40th anniversary of the GDR: "The development of the German Democratic Republic will continue to be the work of the entire people."
From the old ADN building, the Burda-Verlag launched a new weekly magazine: the Superillu. The editors were supposed to write what the East wanted to read, not what people in the West thought about it. In doing so, the new magazine appealed to a whole new target group: East Germans liberated from dictatorship.
On August 23, 1990, the first issue of the illustrated magazine hit the shelves. It reported about a scandal surrounding former head of state Erich Honecker, cheap used cars, and the new freedom – also in bed. Even before the GDR’s past, sex was the issue of the early years. A typical headline read, "Do East women get orgasms more often?"
In 1991, Jochen Wolff became Editor in Chief and shaped the magazine for twenty years. He was from Bavaria and first of all had to become familiar with the way of thinking and interests of his audience. “We reported about successes in the rebuilding after the fall of the Wall. Not mainly about failures like many Western media, which then failed grandiosely", he says, explaining the success strategy. Soon, the Superillu was considered the “central organ of the East." Not everyone liked the often sensational paper. The competition once called it a "riotous bosom paper", but that didn’t bother its readers.
Many East Germans lost their jobs after the German reunification. The sales numbers of the Superillu went down significantly for a short period of time. The editorial office had to find a new strategy. It wrote more about the new reality of life and work in the East, covered company closures and served as an advisor to the new German citizens on all aspects of unemployment benefits and short-time work. In addition, it continued to provide household tips and reports on stars and starlets from the East, such as the pop singers Helga Hahnemann and Chris Doerk or the actor and singer Manfred Krug.
Soon, the Superillu reached a higher circulation in the new federal states than the Stern, Focus, Spiegel and Bunte, long established magazines from the Federal Republic, combined. Even many years after reunification, the newspaper market in the East still follows its own unique requirements. The weekly magazine "Die Zeit" now publishes a specific issue for the region. The former central organ of the SED, "Neues Deutschland", also still exists today as a free socialist newspaper with a focus on the East of the republic.
In 2004, the Superillu Editorial Office moved from the ADN building to the Potsdamer Platz. It continues to ensure that East German perspectives also have their place and focuses on readers between Rügen and the Vogtland.
