Jakob Augstein

Henryk M. Broder, a public commentator, was cited in the publication: "Jakob Augstein is not a salon anti-Semite, he’s a pure anti-Semite … an offender by conviction who only missed the opportunity to make his career with the Gestapo because he was born after the war. He certainly would have had what it takes." After this publication, Broder apologized for his "dramatizations." Apart from that, he upheld his criticism of Augstein.

In a 2012 Top Ten Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Slurs, the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) ranked Jakob Augstein at a ninth position, for statements such as "Israel’s nuclear power is a danger to the already fragile peace of the world", "the ultra-orthodox Hareidim...are cut from the same cloth as their Islamic fundamentalist opponents", "[violence in the middle east always benefits] the insane and unscrupulous. And this time it’s the U.S. Republicans and Israeli government", and "Israel incubates its own opponents [on the Gaza strip]". His inclusion in the ranking sparked a vast controversy in the media.

Between January 2011 and October 2018, he also wrote a weekly column for Spiegel Online ("S.P.O.N. - Im Zweifel links" (i.e. "if in doubt, take a leftist position").

Also since early 2011, he is the counterpart of Nikolaus Blome, a journalist for BILD newspaper, in a weekly debate on controversial issues of German politics, on German public television channel Phoenix ("Augstein und Blome").

On 26 May 2008 Augstein bought, and became editor of, the minor weekly newspaper Der Freitag.

After 2005, he also worked for the parliamentary office of Die Zeit, a weekly German newspaper.

Augstein was born in Hamburg. He grew up as the son of Maria Carlsson, translator, and Rudolf Augstein, publisher of Germany's leading news magazine Der Spiegel. After Rudolf's death in 2002, Jakob was told by his mother that his biological father was the novelist Martin Walser; Jakob publicised his mother's alleged confession in 2009. His half-sisters or sisters are journalist Franziska Augstein, actress Franziska Walser, dramatist Theresia Walser and writers Johanna Walser and Alissa Walser.

After graduating high school (Abitur) at Christianeum Hamburg, Augstein studied political science at the Otto-Suhr-Institut at the Free University of Berlin and at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris (Science Po). From 1993 to 2003 he worked for Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich and Berlin, from 1999 to 2002 being the chief editor of the "Berlin" section of SZ. In 2004, he bought the majority of Rogner & Bernhard, a Berlin publishing house (he sold it to Haffmans & Tolkemitt in 2011). Augstein holds 24 percent of the Augstein family's part of the Spiegel-Verlag publishing house, that his father founded in 1947.

Jakob Augstein (born 28 July 1967) is a German heir, journalist and publisher.