Albert Oeckl

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Albert Oeckl (born December 27, 1909 in Nuremberg ; † April 23, 2001 in Heidelberg ) was a German PR and communication scientist . He was co-founder and later Honorary President of the German Public Relations Society (DPRG) and an adjunct professor at the International University of Rome. The annual paperback of public life that he founded in 1950 bears his name: Der Oeckl .

Life

The inventor of public relations

When advertising was still considered contemptible in German culture , Albert Oeckl invented the new field of public relations . In 1950, at the time of the economic miracle , he established a dry, broad foundation for public relations work with the annual paperback of public life , which finally bore his name: Der Oeckl .

Albert Oeckl passed the Abitur at the humanistic grammar school in Amberg as the best in his class. He studied law and economics in Munich and Berlin and completed his studies in 1934 with a doctorate (title of the dissertation: The German Employees and Their Housing Conditions ). During his studies he became a member of the AGV Munich . Study of law and economics, 1934 doctorate in Munich as Dr. oec. publ.

After his legal traineeship, industry became his professional home, from 1936 to 1945 in the management and press department of IG Farben Industrie in Berlin with a two-year break (1939–1941) in the war. From 1950 he went to the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DIHT) as managing director and head of the public relations department and from there switched back to industry in 1959, now as head of the public relations department of the Badische Anilin- und Sodafabrik (BASF) (until 1974 ).

He then worked as a freelance public relations consultant, head of management seminars and as a communication scientist. Albert Oeckl held various teaching positions, including a. at the University of Heidelberg , later at the University of Augsburg (1960–1969), and from 1974 to 1978 an adjunct professor at the International University of Rome for social psychology and public relations . He was considered one of the experts in his field and was the editor of many scientific books, scientific series and journals.

Various political activities marked his path in life: in 1958 he was co-founder of the German Public Relations Society (DPRG) , its president from 1961 to 1967 and its honorary president since 1986; on an international level, he worked for the Confédération Européenne des Relations Publiques (CERP) and the International Public Relations Association (IPRA).

But he found his real life task - as he said himself - at breakfast in 1949 when he was looking for a telephone number and with the best will in the world could not find it. That was the hour of the birth of the Pocket Book of Public Life (TBÖ), a comprehensive reference work of all important associations, organizations and authorities from politics, business, society and culture with all communication data and relevant contact persons in Germany. It first appeared in 1950. The Oeckl is a large address directory subdivided into 15 sections from A = federal government to P = art and culture . Its register contains 19,000 contact persons and 12,000 institutions and associations. In German journalism as well as in business and politics, Der Oeckl is indispensable.

Albert Oeckl was a pioneer in public relations. He carved out the whole new field of public relations, established it as a teaching subject, and from 1960 he held the relevant lectures at the universities of Heidelberg, Augsburg and the Free International University in Rome. He developed what is now easily called philosophy . The core consisted in the insistently made clear difference between advertising and public relations at every opportunity. Numerous training courses, conferences and a stream of teaching materials were required.

Even the term public relations , which brought all these activities together, came from him. He invented it because his bosses at DIHT didn't like the expression PR . He developed suitable places within the university structures for himself and taught communication studies, social psychology and public relations, but the acronym PR for the entire field was not given up by him.

In 1975 Oeckl was awarded the Great Federal Cross of Merit. In 1985 the DPRG named a prize for young talent after him.

time of the nationalsocialism

Oeckl joined the NSDAP in 1933 and shortly afterwards became an employee of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda . From January 9, 1934 to September 30, 1935, he was under contract as a consultant at its Munich regional office. From 1936 Oeckl worked for IG Farben in Berlin, first in the press office and from 1938 in the management department. At IG Farben, Oeckl made it to the position of deputy head of the management department. He organized factory visits, published business reports, looked after guests of the group during the Olympic Games in 1936 and supervised the work of the personal and organizational files. From 1950 he was able to apply the know-how he had acquired in the publication of the address compendium mentioned above. During the war, Oeckl was with the Brandenburgers , a unit of the secret service . If Oeckl was in Berlin and off duty, he continued to work for IG Farben. Foreign guests of IG Farben were not only "looked after" by Oeckl, but also "skimmed off"; his reports ensured that Berlin was always extremely well informed about those countries in which business interests were pursued. In the summer of 1941 he moved to the Reich Office for Economic Development . In 1944 Oeckl was a functionary in the Vaivara concentration camp ; on January 17, 1944, he reports on the status of the development and expansion work of Baltische Öl GmbH ( Baltöl ) to the Nazi economist and Europe-wide strategist Gustav Schlotterer , Ministerial Director , and thus worked on the National Socialist European plans . However, Oeckl never had a National Socialist degree and no authority to issue instructions, which is why the Allies classified him as a follower after the war .

Important publications

  • 1950: Establishment of the Taschenbuch des Deutschen Lebens (TBÖ) ISSN  0082-1829 ; ZDB ID 204188-1
  • 1964: Manual of Public Relations. Theory and practice of public relations in Germany and around the world. Munich: Süddeutscher Verlag.
  • 1976: PR practice. The key to public relations. Düsseldorf / Vienna: Econ.
  • 1981: Public Relations Politics. Düsseldorf: Econ.
  • 1988: Credibility versus fear - setting the course for public relations. In: Schulze-Fürstenow, Günther (Ed.) (1988): PR Perspectives. Contributions to the self-understanding of society-oriented public relations. Neuwied: Luchterhand, pp. 13–26.
  • 1993: The beginning of the development of public relations. In: Fischer, Heinz D./Ulrike Wahl (Eds.) (1993), pp. 33–45.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. E. Noelle-Neumann: Do good and talk about it. In: The world. April 28, 2001, Retrieved January 2, 2018 .
  2. ^ Association of Alter SVer (VASV): Address book and Vademecum. Ludwigshafen am Rhein 1959, p. 92.
  3. E. Noelle-Neumann: Do good and talk about it. In: The world. April 28, 2001, Retrieved January 2, 2018 .
  4. E. Noelle-Neumann: Do good and talk about it. In: The world. April 28, 2001, Retrieved January 2, 2018 .
  5. E. Noelle-Neumann: Do good and talk about it. In: The world. April 28, 2001, Retrieved January 2, 2018 .
  6. ^ Arnd Krüger : The Olympic Games of 1936 and the world opinion. Bartels & Wernitz, Berlin 1973, ISBN 3-87039-925-2 .
  7. ^ Christian Mattke: Albert Oeckl - his life and work for German public relations . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 978-3-531-14989-9 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-531-90199-2_3 . Schlotterer's rank suggests that Oeckl was also active there.
  8. Verena Kämpgen: Germany PR Country Landscape 2007 . Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management, Lugano 2007 ( squarespace.com [PDF]). On May 1, 1933, he joined the NSDAP (Hitler's ruling national socialist party until 1945); However, he never held a ranking office in the party, nor did he have any national socialist grade. After the war, in 1947, an allied committee classified Oeckl as a Mitläufer (nominal member), a designation given to former members of the Nazi party who were considered not to pose a threat to the emerging democratic, capitalist society.
  9. Gitta Baumann, Tobias Liebert, Katja Rösener: Albert Oeckl . PR Museum, 2012 ( pr-museum.de [PDF]). Albert Oeckl ( Memento of the original dated January 3, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.pr-museum.de