In 2012, a collective of young cultural journalists at the Bauhaus-Universitat Weimar founded a magazine. They called it Die Epilog because they wanted to look at what comes after: after the headline, after the hype cycle, after the first rush of reaction. The first issue appeared in June 2013 with the subtitle "Nicht resignieren! Irgendwas geht immer" and a print run of 10,000 copies. Chefredakteur Fabian Ebeling, later succeeded by Mads Pankow, steered the editorial line from Weimar to Berlin, where the magazine settled and grew to 11,000 copies.
Each issue was monothematic, approaching a single phenomenon through essays, reportage, interviews, lyric poetry, and expansive visual spreads. The themes read like a curriculum for contemporary cultural studies: Trivialkultur, Humor, Kraft (power), Zartlichkeit (tenderness), Konjunktiv (the subjunctive mood). The Zartlichkeit issue, published in 2020, featured texts by Karen Kohler and Anke Stelling and argued that softness was not a retreat but a political strategy. The Kraft issue sent discourse to the gym. The 2017 edition was performed as a staged reading at Berlin's Volksbuhne and on the ARD Radiofestival, because this was a magazine that refused to stay between its covers.
Described by Amazedmag as "angriffslustige und radikale Kunstlekture" (combative and radical art reading), nominated for the ADC Willy Fleckhaus Prize in 2020, and a regular at the Frankfurter Buchmesse and Indiecon, Die Epilog published its final issue in 2023 after eleven years. By then it had earned recognition from Die Zeit, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, and Der Freitag. The epilogue, it turned out, was the most interesting part of the story.
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