Harry drill

Harry Bohrer , actually Hanus Bohrer (* 1916 in Prague ; † October 2, 1985 in London ), was a Czech - British journalist. He is one of the four founders of the Hamburg news magazine Der Spiegel and was the editor-in-chief of its predecessor magazine .

Life

Bohrer came from a German- Jewish family and attended the German humanistic state high school in Prague's old town . He worked as an employee in a Czech glassblower factory in the Ore Mountains and fled to Great Britain before the German occupation of Prague in 1939. However, his parents and sister died in the concentration camps .

In exile, Harry Bohrer initially made his way as a forest worker and finally joined the British Army in 1940 . Since he spoke fluent German, he was transferred to an information unit where, among other things, he censored the mail of prisoners of war . In October 1945 he came to Hanover , now with the rank of sergeant major , where he supervised German newspapers. In 1946 he met John Seymour Chaloner , with whom he developed the project for a German weekly magazine in the style of Time magazine . This resulted in the magazine This Week , for which Bohrer, Chaloner and the emigrant Henry Ormond , who was also involved, also recruited journalist Rudolf Augstein , whom Bohrer knew from his time in Hanover. Bohrer had difficulty organizing rooms, typewriters, and similar supplies. As editor-in-chief, he practically trained his employees in journalism. From him came the rule of thumb that the beginning of a story or a comment must be like a lasso to catch the reader and get them to continue reading.

When the British Foreign Office ordered the handover of the magazine into German hands at short notice in January 1947 after five issues, Augstein then took over the magazine as publisher and editor-in-chief with a publishing license and named it Der Spiegel . Bohrer returned to London, where Chaloner found him a job as editor of the West London Chronicle . He remained associated with Spiegel as a publishing representative in London . Of all the founding fathers of the Spiegel , Augstein particularly valued Bohrer. He called him the most important founding member. Augstein was quoted repeatedly: "We almost loved Harry Bohrer!"

literature

• Re: Harry Bohrer. In: Der Spiegel. 41/1985, October 7, 1985.
• Leo Brawand: The Spiegel Story. How everything began. Econ, Düsseldorf 1987, ISBN 3-430-11555-8 .
• Leo Brawand: Der Spiegel - a child of the occupation. How freedom of the press came to Germany. European Publishing House, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-434-50604-1 .
• Peter Merseburger: Rudolf Augstein. Biography. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-421-05852-2 .