Editorial
Stern editor-in-chief
Healthy eating, the great distrust and the Frank Heppner case – Gregor Peter Schmitz about the new star
The current star with the title topic “How to eat healthy and slim”
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Editor-in-chief Gregor Peter Schmitz takes a look at the latest star-Magazine. An exclusive study shows who Germans still trust today.
Frank Heppner has cooked for world stars such as Madonna and Michael Jackson. On December 7, 2022, shortly after six o’clock, a police special task force arrested him in an apartment above his restaurant in the Austrian ski resort of Kitzbühel. Since that morning, Heppner, 63, has also been publicly considered a defendant in one of the largest terror trials in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. He is suspected of being part of a suspected terrorist organization around Henry XIII. To be Prince Reuss. A large team from “stern Investigativ” has now researched thousands of pages of documents that show that he was deeply involved in the alleged terrorist plans of the Reichsbürger group around Reuss. At a meeting with reporters Tina Kaiser and Birte Meier in Munich, Heppner publicly faced the allegations for the first time and explained why he sees things completely differently than the investigators.
For almost 20 years, Forsa has been asking Germans which institutions they trust. It is not a daily survey, but rather a deep dive into the psychological state of the population. Many things are still intact in the institutions we interact with on a daily basis. 81 percent of Germans trust doctors. This is a high value after the controversial Corona period. 71 percent of employees trust their own employer. This is also a good result in times of structural change. The state institution with the highest reputation is the Federal Constitutional Court, in which 74 percent of Germans have great trust. The overall reputation of the courts is very high at 71 percent. We are lucky to live in a country where the judiciary is not drawn into the maelstrom of power struggles, as is the case in the USA.
But it doesn’t have to stay that way. The AfD could become the strongest party in the state elections in Brandenburg, Thuringia and Saxony and thus also influence judicial elections. A warning sign: Only 34 percent of right-wing populist supporters have great confidence in the Federal Constitutional Court. “It is striking how great the AfD supporters’ distrust of everyone and everything is,” writes my colleague Lorenz Wolf-Doettinchem, “they cultivate a fatalistic worldview.”
The end of the Schäuble era
Wolfgang Schäuble was a great, sometimes loud politician, but also a quiet humorist. This humor, because it was also sharp, could turn into cynicism, for example when he hurled his “ish over” at the Greeks during the euro crisis. But it could also have an incredibly liberating effect, for example when Schäuble seemed unable to understand why he should no longer be active in politics shortly after the assassination attempt on him. Stern has followed Schäuble closely over the years, through his triumphs such as the unification agreement and in his darkest hours such as this assassination attempt in 1990. A few years later he gave the magazine an interview in which he addressed his physical disability. “A cripple as chancellor?” was the question on the cover, which Schäuble posed to the readers with his characteristic harshness. Our author Nico Fried sees the end of the Schäuble era as also the end of the Kohl era.
We know that our loyal, long-time readers in particular love the TV magazine star really appreciate. From this edition onwards we are including it in the magazine in a slightly different form: it offers more television tips and an additional puzzle page, the inside section is free of advertisements. We hope you like it!