Hanns Werner Schwarze

Hanns Werner Schwarze (born June 8, 1924 in Berlin ; † September 3, 1991 ibid) was a German radio journalist, university professor and writer.

Life

Hanns Werner Schwarze grew up as the son of a craftsman in the Berlin district of Köpenick . After attending high school, he was drafted into military service in the Wehrmacht in 1942, where he last served with the rank of lieutenant .

RIAS Berlin

After the end of the war, Hanns Werner Schwarze decided to work as a journalist and worked for RIAS , the radio in the American sector, in West Berlin. As early as 1953 he became the news chief of the RIAS, was the head of a feature broadcast and a political commentator. He was considered one of the "cold warriors" who fought a propaganda battle on the east and west sides. With the construction of the wall on August 13, 1961, the “failure of all politics turned into stone”, he had to face realities and overcome his “own phase as a cold warrior”, according to his long-time colleague Joachim Jauer .

ZDF

After switching to the Second German Television in 1962, Schwarze was briefly head of the central editorial office of Report magazine , but from 1963 first studio manager of the ZDF in Berlin ( Oberlandstrasse , Berlin-Tempelhof ), which he helped build up across from UFA Studios . In 1966, the first 20-minute edition of the first German television program he had designed on all-German issues, the ZDF series “over there”, ran. The title of the show took up common parlance. In western Germany at that time the eastern German state was not called the GDR, but following post-war usage as the eastern zone, zone or simply as “over there”.

Nationality code

The later ZDF program Kennzeichen D that developed from this was directed and moderated by Schwarze from the day it was first broadcast on September 9, 1971. The title of the series "Kennzeichen D" can be traced back to the oval white nationality number for motor vehicles, which until 1973 had a "D" in both German states. It was not until January 1, 1974 that the government of the GDR ordered a change to "GDR" for its territory in order to underline its statehood.

The series “Kennzeichen D”, which was largely conceived and designed by Schwarze, was considered an alternative to the ZDF magazine , which Gerhard Löwenthal directed and moderated , both within ZDF and in the general assessment by viewers, politics and other media in the sense of political balance . Jauer characterized the black work style as “craft, straightforwardness and ironic distance”. In 1977 Schwarzes editorial team received the German Critics' Prize .

Hanns Werner Schwarze was publicly requested several times by Franz Josef Strauss to resign from his position. The CDU regarded him as an “all-German chief critic”, the news magazine Der Spiegel as the “last fang” and “last left-wing liberal” of ZDF. ZDF spoke of a “black allergy”.

The government of the GDR, on the other hand, accused blacks of “revanchism in its purest form”, even calling it an “aggressor in felt slippers”. The editing and moderation of the series "Kennzeichen D" was handed over to Joachim Jauer by Schwarze in 1982. After 25 years as studio manager, Schwarze handed over to his successor Gustav Trampe on October 1, 1988 .

FU Berlin

During his time as ZDF studio manager in Berlin, Schwarze was also a professor of journalism in the communication sciences department at the Free University of Berlin . Some of his seminars took place on the premises of the ZDF, and there were also opportunities for his students to participate in ZDF productions.

writer

Schwarze was active as a writer from the early 1960s and has written several books on German-German and all-German issues. In this context, he also took part in the media policy discussion and expressed his views on the understanding of democracy.

Engagements

For many years, Schwarze was a member of the presidium of the German PEN center and, together with Ingeborg Drewitz , tried to reach an understanding with the PEN center of the GDR.

Awards

For directing from over there , Schwarze received a special honor at the Adolf Grimme Prize in 1971 . In the context of his editorial and at times managerial work for the editorial team of the ZDF series Kennzeichen D , Schwarze and his colleagues received the German Critics' Prize (1977) and the Gustav Heinemann Citizens Prize for Services to Freedom and Justice (1978).

Fonts

• Annoyance or link? What does Berlin have to do with the others? Rautenberg, 1961
• Germans in foreign hands. Streiflichter from Central Germany. Rautenberg, 1961
• With Sebastian Haffner u. a .: The question of Germany after August 13, 1961. Papers from the 12th Barsinghausen Conversation from October 6 to 8, 1961. A conference report. Rautenberg, 1962
• The GDR is no longer a zone (1969). Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1982, ISBN 3-462-00728-9 .
• GDR today. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1970
• Zs. With John M. Mitchell: The GDR Today. Life in the other Germany. Wolff, 1973

literature

• Volker Herres : Kennzeichen D. About the difficulties of making a German-German television magazine. Customs House, 1983
• Heinrich Albertz : I would like to be a radical democrat. A look back at 40 years of democracy. Conversation with Hanns Werner Schwarze. Argon, 1986

Video

• Witnesses of the Century: Heinrich Albertz in conversation with Hanns Werner Schwarze, VHS video, ZDF 1986

Web links

• Literature by and about Hanns Werner Schwarze in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ June 17, 1953 and the media Federal Agency for Civic Education
2. ^ Frankfurter Rundschau , September 11, 1991
3. ↑ Photo: Former main entrance of the ZDF studio Berlin-Tempelhof, Oberlandstrasse. Image from December 24, 2005 on: webme.com
4. ↑ Photo: Former ZDF Studio Berlin-Tempelhof, Oberlandstrasse. Image from December 24, 2005 on: webme.com
5. ↑ Also right . In: Der Spiegel . No. 37 , 1971 ( online ).
6. ↑ Joachim-Felix Leonhard , Hans-Werner Ludwig , Dietrich Schwarze a. a .: media studies. A manual for the development of media and forms of communication. de Gruyter 2002, ISBN 3-11-016676-3 , pp. 2292/2293
7. ↑ Cheeky, hypothermic, all German. In: Die Zeit , No. 39/1973
8. ↑ Cross embarrassing . In: Der Spiegel . No. 32 , 1980 ( online ).
9. ↑ Television: The last fang of the ZDF . In: Der Spiegel . No. 1 , 1980 ( online ).
10. ↑ "You house my black woman ..." In: Die Zeit , No. 36/1982
11. ↑ Hanns Werner Schwarze in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
12. ↑ Ingeborg Drewitz and Hanns Werner Schwarze ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 35 kB) at: stiftung-aufverarbeitung.de