Hanns Hartmann

Memorial plaque on Hanns-Hartmann-Platz, Cologne

Hanns Hartmann (born April 22, 1901 in Essen , † April 5, 1972 in Mindelheim ) was a German director and publisher . From 1947 to 1955 he was head of the NWDR's Funkhaus Köln and was then first director of the WDR until 1960.

Life

He grew up as the son of a locksmith in Essen and graduated from high school with primary school . At the same time he trained as an actor and completed a commercial apprenticeship. In 1925 he became the director of the Hagen City Theater and, at the age of 24, the youngest German theater director. In 1930 he was appointed general manager of the municipal theater in Chemnitz . Already released by the Nazi rulers in March 1933 - probably also because he was not ready to part with his Jewish wife Ottilie Schwartzkopf - he survived the " Third Reich " in Berlin as managing director of Meisel-Musikverlag , which he owned has been a member since 1937.

From autumn 1944 until the end of the war, Hanns Hartmann and his wife hid in Alfred Alexander's garden house in Groß Glienicke .

After the end of the war, he returned to his traditional profession and was initially director of the Berlin Metropoltheater in the eastern sector of the city and also chairman of the denazification commission for Berlin cultural workers. As early as October 1946, he and his wife left for the West under a false name and, through the mediation of an old theater colleague, came to the Northwest German Broadcasting Corporation . On September 1, 1947, Hugh Carleton Greene , the British chief controller of the NWDR, appointed him director of the Funkhaus Köln and succeeded Max Burghardt .

On May 25, 1955, the board of directors of the newly founded Westdeutscher Rundfunk unanimously elected him as the first director. This was followed by the establishment of its own newsroom and the introduction of television as part of the ARD .

In the fall of 1960 he was re-elected twice for a further term by a narrow majority of the WDR board of directors, but this decision was not confirmed both times by the broadcasting council with an equally narrow majority, as he did not receive the votes of the CDU. Hanns Hartmann had to leave WDR prematurely on December 31, 1960. A number of well-known employees followed him, including Werner Höfer .

Hartmann had been married to the Jewish actress Ottilie Schwartzkopf since 1927.

Quote

“ In every good hour - this is how a Beethoven song begins, from which we have borrowed the West German radio pause signal that you have just heard. How happy we would be if the year ahead only wanted to count good hours. (...) But just as the friend proves himself in times of need, the Westdeutscher Rundfunk would like to be at your side even in less good hours with the encouragement that the sublime and beautiful, the power of thought and the power of art are comforting donate know. "

- From his New Year's address on January 1, 1956

Honors

• The Hanns-Hartmann-Platz in Cologne was named after him.
• Federal Cross of Merit 1959

literature

• August Ludwig Degener, Walter Habel: Who is who? The German Who's Who. Vol. 16. Arani, Berlin 1970, ISBN 3-7605-2007-3 , p. 443.
• Klaus Katz: In tune with the times - 50 years of WDR , Cologne 2005
• Thomas Harding: Summer house on the lake. Five families and 100 years of German history, Munich 2015.