Günter Prinz

Günter Prinz (born July 30, 1929 in Ober-Weistritz , Silesia ) is a German journalist and former editor-in-chief of the Bild newspaper .

Career

As the son of a factory owner, with school attendance at the Berlin-Schöneberg Hohenzollern-Gymnasium and Abitur at the Robert-Blum-Oberschule in Berlin, Günter Prinz began a journalistic career as a police reporter for the Berlin daily newspaper Tagesspiegel . From there he moved to Berliner Morgenpost in the early 1950s and BZ 1959 he started at the illustrated Quick in Munich .

In 1966 the publisher Axel Springer offered him a job in Hamburg , and Prinz accepted. From then on he was responsible for “special tasks” at Axel Springer Verlag and developed several magazine formats, including the Eltern magazine . On August 6, 1971, Prince took over the editor-in-chief of the Bild newspaper from his predecessor Peter Boenisch . With his style, a “mix of sex, facts and fiction, politics, crime and consumer tips”, he managed in a relatively short time to significantly improve the number of copies that Boenisch had recently dropped to less than three million copies and even to the record of bring over 5 million. When asked about his 'secret of success', he once replied: “I just put into the paper what I was particularly interested in.” From 1981 he was the editorial director of the Bild Group. Prince developed the action picture fights for you . Within two years, the editorial team received two million letters asking for support. Another of his successful inventions was the “ Ein Herz für Kinder ” ( A Heart for Children ) campaign, with which the Bild newspaper raised money for transport projects, for example for traffic lights in front of kindergartens and schools. With the support of Axel Springer, Prinz developed successful offshoots of the Bild newspaper in the early 1980s . After test runs in June and autumn 1982, a picture of the woman first appeared on March 14, 1983 . Auto Bild followed in 1986 , Europe's most successful car magazine.

In May 1987, Prinz left Axel Springer Verlag. He sold his stake in the media group and became Hubert Burda's special representative . In 1988, Prinz developed the magazines Elle (Germany), Super-Illu and especially for the new federal states the tabloid Super! For Burda together with Franz Josef Wagner . .

In 1991, however, he returned to the board of directors of Axel Springer Verlag for some time .

Günter Prinz is the father of the lawyer Matthias Prinz and lives today as a pensioner in Hamburg.

Publications

• Günter Prinz, Sven Simon: China internally. Conversations with Ms. Wang and other Chinese. Ullstein, Frankfurt / Berlin / Vienna 1972, ISBN 3550074565

Web links

• Hungry journalists beat Skat at Mother Prince's ( memento from January 2, 2004 in the Internet Archive ), article by Lothar Loewe in the Berliner Morgenpost , 1998
• The journalist Günter Prinz is 80 years old