Hans Dichand

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Hans Dichand , actually Johann Hermann Dichand (born January 29, 1921 in Graz , † June 17, 2010 in Vienna ), was an Austrian journalist , media entrepreneur and publisher of the Kronen Zeitung , which he founded in its present form in 1959.

Life

origin

Dichand's father was a shoe uppers cutter, later a foreman at Humanic in Graz and eventually went into business for himself. His mother earned her living as a housemaid and reader for an Austrian countess. When the father lost his shoe company and became impoverished, the family with the three-year-old Hans Dichand was forced to move from the villa in Stiftingtal near Graz to a barracks settlement on the banks of the Mur in the south of Graz. This broke the parents' marriage.

Training until the start of your career

Since it was Dichand's dream to become a journalist , he applied to the then Kronen Zeitung at the age of fourteen . The editor-in-chief Lipschütz advised him to start an apprenticeship as a typesetter in order to catch up on the Matura later in evening school .

Dichand soon got a job at a printing company in Eggenberg, which he kept until the beginning of the Second World War . When he was drafted for military service, he volunteered for the Navy , with which he stayed throughout the Second World War. According to his own statements, he was part of the crew of the auxiliary cruiser "Leverkusen", a 10,000-ton transport ship. On May 1, 1941, the ship sank after a torpedo attack by the British submarine "Upholder". Hans Dichand belonged to the part of the crew that could save itself. When jumping into the water, he broke his leg and was caught in the suction of the sinking ship and sucked into the ship's interior. However, the ship turned again during the sinking, so that he was washed out again. After several hours with a broken leg, bruises and bleeding wounds, protected by a life jacket and a jacket called a " Kulani ", he was rescued by an Italian destroyer and taken to a hospital near Tripoli. In October 1945 Dichand returned to Graz. A completed office training course from the British Military Government made him the preferred candidate for an editorial position in the British press service. It was his job to write shorthand texts from the BBC radio and prepare them for printing in the Neue Steirische Zeitung.

Dichand as a journalist

As early as 1946, Dichand became editor-in-chief and publishing director of the Murtaler Zeitung, which at that time belonged to the three parties ÖVP , SPÖ and KPÖ . Then he went to the Steirerblatt as an editor and columnist .

An editor of this newspaper brought him to Vienna for the Neue Wiener Tageszeitung, for which he worked together with Hugo Portisch in the foreign policy department. Dichand and Portisch became good friends, and later Portisch was brought back to Vienna by Dichand for the Neue Kurier .

In 1949 Dichand applied to the Kleine Zeitung in Graz, which initially failed. However, his ability to use radio news to produce printable news that he had learned in the British service after the war enabled him to solve a major problem facing the Kleine Zeitung. Because the Austrian press agency APA , at that time a cooperative of all party newspapers, had refused to make its news service available to the Kleine Zeitung. Dichand used the radio as a replacement news agency , helping the Kleine Zeitung immensely in its rise. Soon he became its editor-in-chief.

In 1954 Dichand left the Kleine Zeitung and became editor-in-chief of the so-called Neue Kurier, today's Kurier . In this position, Dichand was in direct competition with Gerd Bacher , editor-in-chief of the newspaper Bild-Telegraf. During the so-called Vienna Newspaper War , Dichand briefly had to produce two newspapers with one editorial office.

Due to a dispute with the then editor of the Kurier, Ludwig Polsterer , Dichand left the Kurier and devoted himself to the re-establishment of the Kronen Zeitung.

Kronen newspaper

After acquiring the title rights for the newspaper at a price of 170,000 schillings, Dichand's financial reserves were completely exhausted. The then Vice President of the Austrian Federation of Trade Unions ( ÖGB ), Franz Olah (SPÖ), suggested Dichand take over the financing of the newspaper. He arranged for a loan of ATS 12 million from the Central Savings Bank. Kurt Falk , a former Persil employee, was proposed by Olah as commercial manager. On April 11, 1959, the first edition of the Neue Kronen Zeitung was printed under Dichand's leadership. In 1974 there was a disagreement with Kurt Falk, who held a 50% share in the Krone until 1987.

For a long time Dichand had been in a dispute with the second owner of the newspaper, the German media group WAZ , which, after Kurt Falk's departure in 1989, took his place in Kronen Zeitung with 315 million marks. (According to Dichand's statement in a television portrait, he had previously unsuccessfully applied for loan help from Austrian banks to disburse Falk.) Dichand was in particular at odds with WAZ representative Erich Schumann . The WAZ refused to accept Dichand's son Christoph as the new editor-in-chief of the Krone, but this decision was enforced by an arbitration tribunal . Despite the only 50% share, Hans Dichand was the sole managing director and editor of the Kronen Zeitung until his death in 2010 and had the sole economic right to make decisions and a guaranteed advance profit share of 1 million euros per year. With his death, the WAZ received improved ownership rights, corresponding to its half share. Up until the very end, Dichand tried to buy back the WAZ shares in the Krone, but he did not succeed.

Until shortly before his death, Dichand could be found every day at his workplace on the 16th floor of the Krone high-rise, where he primarily dealt with the pages of letters to the editor. "The old man", as he was called in the editorial team, published comments under the pseudonyms Cato and Aurelius until old age .

Influence on politics and the media

After his death, Hans Dichand is regarded by observers of Austrian politics and journalism as one of the most powerful men in the country. In journalistic reporting outside the Kronen Zeitung, as well as in cabaret programs and caricatures, Dichand was often portrayed as a “Chancellor maker” who, through his journalistic power, can influence who wins elections in Austria.

In 1984, on Dichand's initiative, the Kronen Zeitung supported the concerns of environmentalists during the occupation of the Hainburger Au and was thus involved in preventing the construction of a Danube power station in the Au and its integration into the Donau-Auen National Park . When Kurt Waldheim , the ÖVP candidate for the presidential election , was confronted with massive criticism for his role during the Second World War ( Waldheim affair ) in 1986 , Dichand, and with him the Kronen Zeitung, took his side and contributed to his election.

The 1999 National Council election brought a first significant change . During the election campaign, Dichand supported the SPÖ with its top candidate Viktor Klima . The election winner with the highest increase in votes was nevertheless the FPÖ under Haider, which came in second behind the SPÖ just ahead of the ÖVP. Dichand could not prevent the coalition of ÖVP and FPÖ, which he personally rejected. This is considered to be Austria's first significant political directional decision in the last 30 years, which was made against the declared will of Hans Dichand and the Kronen Zeitung.

The film documentary Kronenzeitung: Every day a boulevard piece by Belgian Nathalie Borgers from 2002 shows Dichand with the then Austrian Federal President Thomas Klestil in the Vienna Hofburg eating a cake together - a Gugelhupf . Then Klestil Dichand proudly leads through his workrooms in the Hofburg. This was often interpreted as Klestil's kneeling before Dichand and, according to observers, confirmed Dichand's power status. Dichand himself described his role with the book he titled in 1996 as Standing in the forecourt of power and put it flirtatiously into perspective. In an interview he said that he would rather pet his dog at home than exercise political power. "Stroking his dog" and "Gugelhupf-Essen" have since been standing images in Austrian cabaret programs for the political power of Dichand. This film documentary has never been broadcast on Austrian public radio - officially due to journalistic deficits, as Borgers used unauthorized, apparently only accidentally recorded audio material from the Hofburg visit in a short film passage. The film has previously been shown on ARTE via satellite and cable TV - for some time the daily program of the cultural broadcaster was no longer shown in the daily TV program of the Kronen Zeitung - as well as on the private TV channel ATV .

In 2007, Hans Dichand received the Austrian Big Brother Award for a life as a “manipulator of the republic”, as Dichand used the reach of his daily newspaper for campaign journalism to generate political moods.

Since the first appearance of the "Krone", as it is called colloquially, it has developed into Austria's most powerful daily newspaper. It "is [...] the total work of art by a single man" ( Hans Rauscher in the standard). According to the Austrian Media Analysis (MA) , the newspaper has a reach of over 43 percent.

Klimt's Danaë , 1907
Dichand Collection

Art collection

Hans Dichand owned one of the most important private art collections in Austria. It mainly consists of works of Art Nouveau and Classical Modernism from Austria, with a focus on Klimt , Schiele , Kokoschka , Moll , Egger-Lienz , Gerstl , Kubin , Boeckl and Wotruba . The collection is spread across the family's various residences and, in some cases, also in bonded warehouses in Switzerland. From 1976 until its closure in 1995, Dichand was also the owner of the traditional Würthle Gallery in Vienna's Weihburggasse , which was last run by his daughter Johanna Dichand. The value of the collection is estimated at several hundred million euros.

There is no catalog or publicly accessible list of the works of art owned by Dichand. In an exhibition planned for 2003 in the then cultural capital Graz , essential parts of the collection were to be shown. The project “ultimately failed because of the Monument Protection Act , according to which significant works of Austrian art history can be subject to an export ban .” This would have reduced the possible sales value. Therefore, the works remained abroad or in anonymity.

Private

Hans Dichand was married to Helga Dichand (* 1937) and they had three children together. Her son Christoph Dichand has been editor-in-chief at Krone since 2003. Michael and their daughter Johanna are not involved in the newspaper. Dichand's daughter-in-law Eva Dichand , wife of Christoph, is the editor of the free newspaper Heute .

The fresh grave (June 26, 2010)

On June 17, 2010, Hans Dichand died of kidney failure in the Vienna General Hospital in the presence of his family , after having been decrepit for a long time . He was buried in the Grinzinger Friedhof (group 6, row 1, number 9).

Fonts

  • Kronen newspaper. The story of a success. Orac, Vienna 1977, ISBN 385368-832-2 .
  • Encounter with Paris. With 16 reproductions after watercolors by Lyse Casanova. Molden, Vienna 1981, ISBN 3-217-01229-1 .
  • The artists of classical modernism in Austria. Propylaea, Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-549-05311-8 .
  • In the forecourt of power. Memories of a journalist. Ibera & Molden, Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-900436-36-3 .

literature

Web links

Wikiquote: Hans Dichand  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Georg Wailand: The rich and the super-rich in Austria. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1981, ISBN 3-455-08763-9 , p. 143.
  2. ↑ Gerald John, Eva Weissenberger : The Dichands - War for the Crown. ( Memento of January 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) In: Falter , issue 45/2003 of November 5, 2003.
  3. ↑ Hans Dichand: A Mother's Day story without equal… In: Kronen Zeitung, edition of May 13, 2007, Krone Bunt pp. 6–9
  4. ↑ ORF.at : What's next with the "Krone"? Lots of open questions.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved June 18, 2010.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / orf.at  
  5. ↑ a b Hans Rauscher: Dichand and the power. The people, the newspaper and the "old man". In: Der Standard, print edition from June 18, 2010.
  6. ↑ a b Profile (Vienna): Hans Dichand was very ambitious and even more secretive as an art collector. Report by Sebastian Hofer, June 26, 2010
  7. ↑ Der Standard : Obituary: Hans Dichand 1921-2010 , print edition from June 18, 2010.
  8. ↑ Oliver Pink : The Dichands - the family behind the patriarch. diePresse.com , June 18, 2010, accessed April 9, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Dichand, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dichand, Johann Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian journalist and editor of the Kronen Zeitung
DATE OF BIRTH January 29, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Graz
DATE OF DEATH June 17, 2010
Place of death Vienna