Hans Huffzky

Hans Huffzky , actually Johannes Oswald, (born April 3, 1913 in Dresden , † December 5, 1978 in Hamburg ) was a German journalist, editor and publishing consultant. He developed and ran a number of successful women's magazines.

First years

Hans Huffzky came from a humble background. His father, a trained file cutter, had worked his way up to become a small clerk. He died early. Mother Martha Oswald brought John and his sister with a Bietchen or green store through a small vegetable business.

At the age of twelve or 13, Johannes joined the Bündische Jugend . He became a member of the local group Dresden-Seevorstadt of the Saxon youth in the Bund der Deutschen Freischar . The youth organization made a number of stays abroad possible for him. At the age of sixteen he wrote a little book under the pseudonym Hans Huffzky with the title: We roam Bulgaria. Ten scouts on an adventurous expedition . The writer Walter von Molo contributed a benevolent accompanying text. The drawings came from the traveler and friend Armin Schönberg.

During his school days, Huffzky published his travel experiences in various newspapers. In 1932, Kürschner's German Literature Calendar described him as a writer. That was the year he graduated from high school. He kept the pseudonym Hans Huffzky.

Frankfurt

After graduating from high school, Huffzky volunteered for a year at the Frankfurt Sozietäts-Verlag under the editor-in-chief Franz Geisenheyer. In addition to a colorful range of topics from fashion to disasters, the paper brought out individual critical reports. The traineeship was followed by a position at the Frankfurter Zeitung in the same publishing house.

In addition to his work for their local section, he wrote for the latest newspaper , a mass newspaper of the Sozietäts-Verlag.

Berlin

In 1933 he exchanged his position with the young editor and friend Hans Köster and moved to the Berlin editorial office of the Frankfurter Zeitung until 1937. In 1934 he published his second and last book: Drei hitchhiking northward. A boy's ride through Sweden . Heinz Köster and he had the Jewish colleague Heinz Berggrün , who was affected by the writing ban, write articles under their names and paid him the fee. Berggrün later emigrated to the USA .

Around 1937, Huffzky started his own business as a journalist. He wrote articles for papers that did not belong to the National Socialist party press. In different questionnaires he gave different information about his clients. He then worked as a freelancer for Berliner Tageblatt , Leipziger Neuesten Nachrichten , various radio stations and the women's magazines Die Dame , Hella and Die Junge Dame .

The young lady

In 1938, publisher John Jahr senior brought 25-year-old Hans Huffzky as the chief editor of the women's illustrated Die Junge Dame . According years Huffzky had at this time because of the DC circuit had not much pleasure from writing for the Berliner Tageblatt .

Military service

In 1940 Huffzky was called up for military service. He remained the chief editor of the Young Lady's imprint . After five months as an infantryman, he was transferred to a propaganda company as a war correspondent. At first he wrote some humorous reports about the life of a soldier for his magazine. From 1942 to 1944 he was the chief editor of the army newspaper . Like all front newspapers, it was subordinate to the Wehrmacht Propaganda Department in the Wehrmacht High Command. His reports for this got a little closer to reality. He knew how to write articles in such a way that they neither offended the censors nor increased the fears of the local readership. He often emphasized the comradeship of the soldiers and the common experiences of the men that welded together . Only towards the end of his work for the army newspaper did he describe the terrible sides of the war. He stayed away from any political judgment. Critical texts would not have been possible with the strict censorship either. While working for the front newspaper, he made friends with Helmut Grömmer, who was in charge of the newspaper's entertainment section.

After the war

After the end of the war, Huffzky initially worked as a freelancer for publishers and the Northwest German Broadcasting Corporation , planned new magazines with friend Grömmer and delved into Marxist studies. As a former officer and employee of the army newspaper, he had no way of obtaining one of the licenses from the military government that was required at the time to publish a magazine . At the end of the 1950s, Huffzky in Hamburg, together with the publishers Ernst Rowohlt and John Jahr senior, financially supported the efforts of Klaus Rainer Röhl to anchor a popular, left-wing magazine in the magazine market with concrete (magazine) .

Constanze

In 1947, publisher John Jahr senior brought the journalist to Hamburg as the future editor-in-chief of Constanze . Jahr and Axel Springer had received a license from the British military government to publish a women's magazine. Huffzky brought along a number of the old young lady's employees , including Ruth Andreas-Friedrich and the photographer Hubs Flöter . He brought his school friend Henry Reinhard Möller as a layouter , his childhood friend Armin Schönberg as an illustrator and consultant and hired Helmut Grömmer, from the former army newspaper, as his deputy. It was easy for the editorial staff to forget the ideal of women and mothers as the subordinate calm of the Third Reich family and to switch to a more modern image of women.

Constanze had unexpectedly great success. 300,000 copies were sold straight away. The magazine remained the dominant women's magazine in the post-war period for a long time. Huffzky left the editorial team in 1957 and stayed with the publisher as a consultant. Grömmer was his successor as editor-in-chief.

Petra

Huffzky saw himself more as a journalist than a journalist. Based on his concept, the equally successful Petra appeared in 1964 , a women's magazine aimed at younger women readers. It was sold to the competing Jahreszeiten Verlag and is still in existence today.

Brigitte

In the 1950s, Huffzky was commissioned to create a concept for another women's magazine: Brigitte . Since Constanze and her readers were getting on in years and had got into difficulties because of the change from biweekly to weekly publication, a more modern magazine for younger readers was to be created. The concept, created with the Constanze editors Peter Brasch and Hannelore Krollpfeiffer , again proved successful. In 1969 Constanze merged with Brigitte .

research

Hans Huffzky died in 1978. Media scientists deal with him and his women's magazines. Among other things, you are investigating the question of how successful women's magazines were created under three governments (Third Reich, military government, democracy). And they ask about Huffzky's image of women and to what extent it has found its way into magazines. Huffzky's daughter Karin said that privately and professionally he preferred the secretary type. Although he certainly promoted the careers of gifted women, he expected that they would find their fulfillment more in subordinate professions and that they should be financially, but not spiritually dependent on men.

Trivia

Huffzky is credited with the sentence "The head of the magazine Our animal is not a dachshund" when asked how it could be that as a man he was responsible for a magazine for women.

Works

• Hans Huffzky: We roam Bulgaria , Orell Füssli Verlag, Zurich 1931

literature

• Sylvia Lott: The women's magazines by Hans Huffzky and John year. On the history of the German women's magazine between 1933 and 1970. Dissertation. Wissenschaftsverlag Volker Spiess, Berlin 1985. ISBN 3-89166-011-1
• Sylvia Lott Almstadt: Brigitte. The first hundred years. Chronicle of a women's magazine. Gruner + Jahr Verlag, Hamburg 1986. ISBN 3-570-04930-2

Individual evidence

1. ^ Detlef Siegfried, Time Is on My Side. Consumption and Politics in West German Youth Culture of the 1960s. Wallstein, Göttingen, 2006, p. 305