Necessary Rumpus

Whether it was a Mercedes or a Minifon, a Leica or Loewenbraeu, Germans have always been proud to a fault of their craftsmanship, and until two years ago no one ever dared to suggest openly that a product's quality was really not always wunderbar. Then along came Journalist Waldemar Schweitzer with a brand-new brand-conscious magazine called DM (for Deutsche Mark). DM tested and graded consumer goods for design and durability, published ratings ranging from sehr empfehlenswert (highly recommendable) down to a damning nicht empfehlenswert. DM's circulation has soared to 360,000 copies weekly, and its initial debt of $250,000 has long since been paid off. But DM has also been socked with 60 court actions by irate manufacturers seeking $2,500,000 in damages, and the more outraged have succeeded six times in the past nine months in getting issues banned from newsstands by court order.

DM is patterned after the U.S.'s Consumer Reports. Unlike Consumer Reports, however, Schweitzer accepts advertising, bunching it in the middle of the magazine. From earnings, DM has built a $175,000 laboratory at Stuttgart, where a staff of 20, including engineers, chemist, industrial designer and micro-photographer, test everything from toothbrushes to typewriters. DM's editorial staff of 20 reports two test results weekly, last week rated after-shave lotions and reported German skindiving masks and fins inferior to French and Italian.

Since April, DM has been driving nine European cars 375 miles a day each, reporting weekly on expenses and performance. One glaring DM headline charged that "the Fiat Europa has brakes which are a danger to your life." Fiat sued for $375,000, arguing that one case of jammed brakes hardly justified a blanket indictment of all Fiats. DM is also currently being sued by a watch company, a furniture mail-order house, a concocter of hair restorer and a bubble-bath maker.

Gradually, however, DM is making companies more enlightened. Construc-ta washing machines, one of the earlier victims of a "less recommendable" decree, sagged from a 38% share of the German automatic washer market to 20% ; Constructa sued and lost but subsequently introduced new machines that won a higher rating. Mail-Order Magnate Joseph Neckermann rushed to Stuttgart to complain about DM's criticism of a spin drier sold by his firm; in DM's test lab Neckermann watched the machine fail again, and canceled his contract with the manufacturer. Says one businessman: "DM's greatest merit is that it has created a permanent feeling of unease among German producers. Schweitzer has made the necessary rumpus to get things talked about."

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