Franz Sommerfeld

Franz Sommerfeld in May 2010

Franz Sommerfeld (born August 15, 1949 in Leer (East Friesland) as Franz Hutzfeldt ) is a German former student functionary, author , journalist and media manager.

Life

Sommerfeld grew up in Leer and attended the Ubbo-Emmius-Gymnasium . Then he studied Protestant theology in Mainz. He had been a member of the DKP since the 1970s . In 1973 he became secretary of the Marxist Student Union Spartakus (MSB) and was the editor-in-chief of the MSB student magazine Rote Blätter . When in 1983 the Deutsche Volkszeitung (DVZ) merged with the newspaper Die Tat der VVN , Sommerfeld became editor-in-chief there. He considered the basis of future contributions to be the knowledge that the basic evil of all impending dangers up to and including the destruction of the planet is “private ownership of the means of production”.

At the end of the 1980s, DVZ switched to Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika course . The historian Dirk Mellies sees Sommerfeld as one of the main actors in this change of direction, which is controversially discussed within the left. When DVZ first went into liquidation at the end of 1989 and then went up in the weekly newspaper Freitag , Sommerfeld said he was one of the new founders. He then worked there as an editor. In 1991 he became a reporter, in 1994 political correspondent and 1997 deputy editor-in-chief of the Berliner Zeitung . In the opinion of Zeit journalist Winfried Konrad, in this way he revised his “left-wing” basic conception towards a “state-supporting” position.

In 1999 he became editor-in-chief of the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung and in 2000 moved to the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger in the same position .

Sommerfeld has been a member of the jury for the Theodor Wolff Prize since 2005 . In 2013 he joined the board of trustees there. In 2007, he and the deputy editor-in-chief Anton Sahlender of the Würzburger Main-Post received the award “Journalists of the Year” from Medium Magazin in equal parts in the category “Local: authors and editors-in-chief”. It was said that Sommerfeld had "shown strategic ability as regional editor-in-chief [...] in 2007". Sommerfeld has been a member of the 40-person jury since 2008.

In 2009 he was appointed to the board of the M. DuMont Schauberg media group and retired in 2014.

Fonts

• with Beate Landefeld and Bernd Gäbler : dead ends and wrong turns. “Left” opportunistic currents in the student movement. With contributions by Bernd Gäbler, Werner van Haren, Rainer Krings, Beate Landefeld, Franz Sommerfeld and Gaby Zipfel. Weltkreis, Dortmund 1979.
• with Werner van Haren as editor: Poland: Church, KOR, communism? Plambeck, Neuss 1981.
• as editor: Pioneers in the new Germany. West-Eastern portraits. Rowohlt Taschenbuch-Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-499-19365-5 .
• The mosque dispute. An exemplary debate on immigration and integration . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-462-04010-4 .

Web links

Commons : Franz Sommerfeld  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Franz Sommerfeld in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography and reviews of works by Franz Sommerfeld at perlentaucher.de

Individual evidence

1. ^ Franz Sommerfeld In: kress.de , accessed on October 4, 2017.
2. ↑ Werner Rügemer: Colonia corrupta. Münster 2002, p. 123.
3. ↑ Editorial, in: DVZ / die tat, September 6, 1983, cited. based on: Arne Kapitza: Transformation of the East German press: "Berliner Zeitung", "Junge Welt" and "Sonntag / Freitag" in the process of German unification. Opladen 1997, p. 90.
4. ^ Arne Kapitza: Transformation of the East German press: "Berliner Zeitung", "Junge Welt" and "Sonntag / Friday" in the process of German unification. Opladen 1997, p. 91.
5. ↑ Dirk Mellies: Trojan horses of the GDR? The neutralist-pacifist network of the early Federal Republic and the Deutsche Volkszeitung, 1953–1973. Frankfurt am Main (et al.) 2006, p. 102.
6. ↑ Symposium on 25 years of TA: The most important thing remains the reader. In: Thüringer Allgemeine , January 13, 2015.
7. ^ Arne Kapitza: Transformation of the East German press: "Berliner Zeitung", "Junge Welt" and "Sonntag / Friday" in the process of German unification. Opladen 1997, p. 337.
8. ^ Franz Sommerfeld Deputy Editor-in-Chief. in: Professional Association of German Newspaper Publishers, Industry News, January 24, 1997.
9. ↑ Winfried Konrad: How the "Berliner Zeitung" wants to win the West and keep the East. in: Die Zeit, February 14, 1997.
10. ^ Franz Sommerfeld editor-in-chief of the "Mitteldeutsche Zeitung" , BDZV , February 24, 1999
11. ↑ New editor-in-chief at Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger , HORIZONT Online May 3, 2000
12. ^ Jury of the Theodor Wolff Prize. ( Memento of the original from December 29, 2010 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. In: bdzv.de .  
13. ↑ BDZV: Four new members for Theodor Wolff Prize Jury ( Memento of the original from October 4, 2017 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. In: bdzv.de , May 22, 2013, accessed October 4, 2017. 
14. ↑ Medium Magazin: Medium Magazin, the Journalists of the Year 2007 Medium Magazin website. Retrieved July 25, 2016.
15. ↑ Stefan Niggemeier named Journalist of the Year. In: kressnews , December 12, 2007. The false statement that Sommerfeld was the recipient of the Golden Prometheus from Helios Verlag can be found online , see: Peter Kleinert: Why KStA editor-in-chief Franz Sommerfeld is assisting Mr. Clement. What is more appalling? in: Neue Rheinische Zeitung, August 2, 2008 ( online ).
16. ↑ The Journalists of the Year (...) The 2008 Jury , in: Medium Magazin 1 + 2/2009. (PDF; 1.06 MB)