Franz May

This article deals with the lawyer and artistic director Franz Mai. On the doctor and social reformer see Franz Anton Mai .

Franz Wilhelm Mai (born December 31, 1911 in Cologne ; † October 26, 1999 in Saarbrücken ) was a German lawyer and from 1958 to 1977 the first director of the Saarland Broadcasting Corporation as a public broadcaster .

Life

Franz Mai came to Saarbrücken shortly after his birth, where his father was a senior government councilor. Here he first attended the Ludwigsgymnasium , from 1927 the Jesuit colleges in Feldkirch (Austria) and Bad Godesberg . In 1932 he passed the Abitur at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium (Trier) , where he received the Scheffel Prize of his year. He then studied in Frankfurt , Munich and Bonn law , besides also philosophy and art history . In 1935 he passed the first state examination and in 1940 the second state examination; before that he had received his doctorate (Dr. iur.) From the law faculty of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn in 1939 . After the second state examination, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and suffered two serious wounds in World War II. In August 1945, Mai returned from French captivity and took up a position as a district judge in Frankfurt am Main. In 1950 he came to the Federal Chancellery , in the same year he became second, then in 1951 first personal advisor to Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer . In 1952 he moved to the Federal Press Office , where he was initially head of the department for film, radio and television, and then head of central administration until the end of 1957. At the beginning of the 1950s, Mai and other authors wrote a number of legal commentaries on housing and tenancy law .

With the accession of the Saarland to the Federal Republic of Germany on January 1, 1957, the previous Saarländischer Rundfunk GmbH became a public broadcasting company; the management was initially held by the interim managing director Eugen Meyer, who had been in office since 1955. In June 1957, Franz Mais was elected as artistic director, he took up his post on January 1, 1958 and was re-elected in 1962, 1967 and 1972. In 1964 Mai initiated the Europawelle (later Europawelle Saar , then SR 1 Europawelle ), the first predominantly pop music-based program in German radio history. During his term of office, the construction of the new broadcasting house on Halberg, inaugurated in 1965, falls . The Golden Europe , which has been awarded since 1968, also goes back to a personal idea of ​​Maize. After his last five-year term of office, Mai retired on December 31, 1977, and was succeeded by Hubert Rohde .

Franz Mai also wrote poems (volume of poems Des Lebens stille Flut , 1987) and radio plays (for example Great German Democrats: Joseph von Görres , produced by Hessischer Rundfunk 1957). He campaigned for the promotion of Franco-German relations and was chairman and later honorary chairman of the German-French Society Saar e. V. , which has been awarding the Franz-Mai-Preis every year since 1994 to pupils of the German-French Gymnasium Saarbrücken . The driveway to the Funkhaus Halberg in Saarbrücken was named Franz-Mai-Straße in 2000 .

Controversy

As director of the Saarländischer Rundfunk, Franz Mai was at the center of numerous controversies with high publicity. Due to his decision to interrupt the radio program of the European wave planned for 1964 all day with advertising and to win commercial enterprises as sponsors of program parts, the SR was threatened with expulsion from the ARD at the end of 1963 ; however, the conflict was resolved. In 1969 Mai announced, with great media attention, that he was leaving the Germany Foundation , which had been established three years earlier , because, in his opinion, it had distanced itself from Konrad Adenauer's intellectual and political legacy. The numerous attempts by the CDU member Mai, who is known as a decidedly conservative , to get politically “ left ” positions out of the SR's program and to keep employees close to the SPD away from management positions within the broadcaster caused a stir.

In June 1971 Mai gave notice to the senior editor of the literature department, Arnfrid Astel , because he had made a critical interjection at a CDU event, in which Mai saw a serious violation of professional journalism. Immediately after the resignation was announced, he had two men take Astel out of his office and the broadcasting house. After the labor court overturned the dismissal, Mai pronounced another immediate dismissal against Astel in September, now because of the publication of an alleged left-wing political epigram . The so-called "Astel case" caused quite a stir in the autumn of 1971, both politically and publicly. The Juso state group Saar, co-organized by Oskar Lafontaine , organized several go-ins in the SR Board of Directors, the MP Friedel Läpple opened a debate on the case in the state parliament . In his sensational New Year's address on January 1, 1972, the director declared that “journalistic libertinage” would endanger the basic democratic order and that he would not tolerate “forces of radical left-wing romanticism” on Saarland radio. Arnfrid Astel, represented by lawyer Arno Walter , also prevailed in a labor court case regarding his second dismissal as well as in two appeals proceedings brought up in May up to the Federal Labor Court and was able to return to his post in 1973.

In 1976, Franz Mai succumbed to the last instance before the Saarland Higher Administrative Court against the historian Heribert Schwan , from whose four-part television documentary about the post-war history of the Saarland he removed or changed critical passages about the Saarland government policy between 1945 and 1955 without the author's approval.

Awards (selection)

• Great Cross of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1972)
• Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (1976)
• Officer of the French Legion of Honor (1976)
• Saarland Order of Merit (1977)

Publications (selection)

• The legal position of the homeworker and the house trader. Mayr, Würzburg 1939 (also: Dissertation University of Bonn 1939)
• Hans Friese / Franz Mai: The Condominium Act. Publisher Commentator, Frankfurt am Main 1951
• Franz Mai / Hellmut Bormann: The current rental law with special consideration of the regulation PR 71/51 of November 29, 1951. Verlag Commentator, Frankfurt am Main 1952
• August Seeling / Franz Mai / Herbert Krüger: Problems of the internal structure of the public broadcasters. Lecture event on May 17 and 18, 1974. Beck, Munich 1974, ISBN 3-406-03875-1
• Willi Geiger / Franz Mai / Heinz Burghart: The public broadcasting between the state, parties and interests. Edition Interfromm, Zurich 1978, ISBN 3-7201-5108-5
• Contemporary at a turning point. Birthday speech of a seventy year old. Personal reflections on the spiritual crisis of our time. Self-published, Saarbrücken 1981
• Life's silent flood. Selected poems. Krause, Freiburg im Breisgau 1987, ISBN 3-923523-11-4
• The future of faith and the crisis of the religions of the present. Attempt of a new believable religious worldview. Reflections, questions, hypotheses, confessions from a thoughtful contemporary. Krause, Freiburg im Breisgau 1989, ISBN 3-923523-12-2
• Some selected speeches and writings. Volume 1: On contemporary history. On the cultural-political and intellectual-historical situation of the present. Krause, Freiburg im Breisgau 1991

literature

• Franz May. Some selected speeches and writings. A contribution to the history of the Saarländischer Rundfunk from 1957 to 1977. Published on the occasion of the 65th birthday of the director of the SR and his twenty years of activity. [Festschrift.] Saarländischer Rundfunk, Saarbrücken 1977
• In memory of Dr. Franz Mai (1911–1999), director of Saarland Broadcasting 1958–1977. Speeches and photos on the occasion of the funeral service on November 5, 1999. Souvenir photos from his tenure as founding director of the SR. Selected letters of condolence. [Commemorative publication.] Saarländischer Rundfunk, Saarbrücken 2000
• Article Mai, Franz , in: Munzinger-Archiv, delivery 4/2000, sheet no. P004528-7

Web links

• Literature by and about Franz Mai in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ dfgsaar.de ( Memento from November 23, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), accessed May 12, 2008
2. ↑ saarbruecken.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; accessed May 12, 2008  
3. ↑ Rebellion of the Impoverished . In: Der Spiegel . No. 50 , 1963 ( online ).
4. ↑ First HB . In: Der Spiegel . No. 29 , 1972 ( online ).
5. ↑ "The radicalizations went back much further". Arnfrid Astel, longtime SR literary editor and writer, about the 1968 time in Saarland, about beards, a Juso flat share and "sunk" omnibuses , in: Saarbrücker Zeitung , May 13, 2008, page A2
6. Jump up forces on the march . In: Der Spiegel . No. 3 , 1972 ( online ).
7. ↑ Franz Mai and the Libertinage , in: Die Zeit No. 44/1976.
8. ^ Announcement of awards of the Saarland Order of Merit . In: Head of the State Chancellery (Ed.): Official Gazette of the Saarland . No. 18 . Saarbrücker Zeitung Verlag und Druckerei GmbH, Saarbrücken May 9, 1977, p. 391–392 ( uni-saarland.de [PDF; 244 kB ; accessed on May 27, 2017]).