Part of the photos from the archive of the magazine star can now be viewed online. Under www.stern-fotoarchiv.de the Bavarian State Library announced on Tuesday that the first 250,000 images would be made available. In total, the archive includes around 15 million photos, slides, negatives and prints that the Hamburger Magazin donated to the library in Munich in 2019. Gradually they are to be cataloged and digitized.
“The photo archive of star is considered a visual memory not only of the Federal Republic of Germany, but of contemporary history in general,” said the Director General of the State Library, Klaus Ceynowa. More than 1000 reports from the years 1972 to 2001 can already be seen. They show pictures of everyday life in the Federal Republic and of the former GDR, but also recordings from the Balkan war or a famine in Ethiopia. There are also portraits of well-known personalities from politics, culture and sport, such as the former Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt, the Nobel Prize winner for literature Günter Grass or goalkeeper Toni Schumacher go back to 1948. By the end of 2025, the State Library intends to make the first three million negatives from 1971 and the associated contact sheets available online.