Franz Karl Maier
Franz Karl Maier (born October 4, 1910 in Stuttgart ; † April 13, 1984 in Berlin ) was the publisher and editor of the Tagesspiegel (1949–1984).
Life
Franz Karl Maier studied law and political science at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen . Since 1928 he was a member of the Catholic student union AV Guestfalia Tübingen in the CV .
He established himself as a lawyer in Stuttgart in 1935. He was a soldier from 1939 to 1945. After the Second World War he became a license holder and co-editor of the Stuttgarter Zeitung and in 1946 the Württemberg-Baden government appointed him public prosecutor in front of the Stuttgart Chamber on the basis of the “Law for the Liberation from National Socialism and Militarism” .
He succeeded in having Hjalmar Schacht , Reichsbank President and Minister of Economics, initially acquitted in Nuremberg , and sentenced to eight years in a labor camp. During his investigations, Maier came to the conviction that Schacht could only be justly condemned if one also called to account beforehand those who had approved Hitler's Enabling Act on March 23, 1933 and thus fundamentally paved the way for his tyranny and arbitrary rule. These included prominent Württemberg politicians in the first post-war years such as Reinhold Maier , Prime Minister, or his Minister of Education, Wilhelm Simpfendörfer . The indictment brought in January 1948 was directed against both of them as the "main culprits", as a result of which a public debate broke out over the responsibility of the bourgeois parties in the Weimar Republic and denazification was called into question.
Franz Karl Maier's consistent action against fellow travelers, against adaptation and academic passivity did not make him friends with his academic colleagues, and later also with the American occupation. In 1949, Maier was released from his duties as public prosecutor because he had mixed his profession as a journalist with his function as a prosecutor for the Arbitration Chamber. He left the Stuttgarter Zeitung and went to Berlin .
There he was able to implement the ideals, as they had been given by the western allies, license holders Erik Reger and Walther Karsch, to the Tagesspiegel , where he was publisher and editor until 1984, to standards that in the island district for decades Should apply. For Franz Karl Maier, freedom of the press was always civic freedom exercised in trust.
In Berlin , Maier remained contentious and straightforward, and came into new conflicts again, not only with the competition from Axel Springer Verlag , but also with the Berlin Senate and the trade unions, with editors and printers. In 1977, together with Manfred Dannenberger and Lothar C. Poll, he founded the Tagesspiegel press foundation, which held around a quarter of the share capital of the Tagesspiegel publishing company to ensure independence . At Maier's suggestion, in 1985/1986 the Heilandskirche , located on the banks of the Havel south of the Brandenburg village of Sacrow in the GDR territory (designed by Persius in 1844 based on the sketches of Friedrich Wilhelm IV ), was saved from decay. Members of the board of trustees included a. long-time employees of the newspaper who held the shares in the press foundation in trust. He was the namesake of the Franz Karl Maier Prize, an editorial prize awarded by the Tagesspiegel GmbH Press Foundation from 1985 to 1995 , which wanted to give the form of commentary greater recognition and encourage young journalists to express their own opinion.
Maier died after a short illness and was buried in the Prague cemetery in Stuttgart .
Maier's daughter Nora was married first to Frank Forster and then to John Lydon , the Sex Pistols singer .
Fonts
- Is Schacht a criminal? Indictment of the former public plaintiff at the Stuttgart Chamber of Judges . 1947 published by “Die Zukunft” in Reutlingen with a foreword by Carl Severing , reissued in 1988 by Argon Verlag Berlin with an afterword by Uwe Wesel , ISBN 3-87024-702-9 .
- Unlimited powers for Hitler. The “Enabling Act” - The blackest day of German parliamentarism . In: Tagesspiegel , March 23, 1983.
literature
- And the right to political error became the norm of exoneration , Gerhard E. Gründler : How was Germany denazified? ( How was Germany denazified? ( Memento from February 22, 2002 in the Internet Archive ))
- Justus Fürstenau: Denazification - A Chapter of German Post-War Politics , Luchterhand, Neuwied 1969 (pp. 194–198 in detail on the proceedings against Reinhold Maier and Wilhelm Simpfendörfer and on the role of Franz Karl Maier)
- Harald Horwitz: Zero Hour in the German Press - American Press Policy in Germany 1945-1949 . 1972. In detail about the beginnings of the Stuttgarter Zeitung and Der Tagesspiegel and the license holders.
- Lothar C. Poll : Franz Karl Maier, freedom of the press is freedom of the citizen . In: "unter 3" - Berliner Presse Club - History of an Institution , Berlin 2007.
- Uwe Wesel in Franz Karl Maier . Berlin 1988.
Web links
- Literature by and about Franz Karl Maier in the catalog of the German National Library
- The Prime Minister a Nazi size and an enemy of Jews? State Archives Ludwigsburg
- DER SPIEGEL 5/1947
Individual evidence
- ^ "And the right to political error became the norm of exoneration" ( Memento of February 22, 2002 in the Internet Archive ), Gerhard E. Gründler: How was Germany denazified?
- ^ "Traditionally, a press law should protect the state" , Ulrich Bausch: On the way to civil society
- ↑ Frank Schirrmacher: Have you seen George, Herr von Weizsäcker? In: FAZ , June 30, 2007
- ^ Kulturpreise.de: Franz-Karl-Maier-Preis
- ↑ Berlin in 1984 . In: Calendar at the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Maier, Franz Karl |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German publisher of the Tagesspiegel |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 4, 1910 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Stuttgart |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 13, 1984 |
| Place of death | Berlin |