Rudolf Augstein, 79; Der Spiegel Founder and Chief Editorialist

Rudolf Augstein, who founded the progressive German newsweekly Der Spiegel, which rose to prominence in post-Nazi Germany on the strength of its investigative reporting and its acerbic political commentaries, died Thursday in Germany of pneumonia. He was 79.

The magazine’s publisher and chief editorialist until his death, Augstein was born in Hanover, where he began his journalism career as a trainee on a local newspaper. In 1941, he was drafted into the German army and was wounded on the Eastern Front.

Released from combat, he went to Hamburg in 1945, and began working for a British-owned newsweekly magazine. In 1947, at age 23, Augstein took over as editor and publisher, and renamed it Der Spiegel, which means The Mirror.

Augstein soon became known as a fierce critic of West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who governed the country after World War II. Augstein’s most dramatic moment as a publisher came in 1962, during Adenaur’s term, when he published an article that questioned West Germany’s military readiness in case of a Soviet nuclear attack.

Augstein was charged with treason and spent 103 days in jail before the charges against him were dropped for lack of evidence. The incident became known as the “Spiegel affair” and cemented Der Spiegel’s reputation as a beacon of the free press. It also led to a loss of confidence by many Germans in Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss, who had accused Augstein. Not long after the case was over, Strauss resigned from office.

In 1972, Augstein spent a few months as an elected member of the West German parliament before he quit and went back to publishing. Four years later, he married his fifth wife, Anna Marie Hurtgen, who survives him along with four children from his previous marriages.