Henri Nannen

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Henri Nannen (left) at the Gödecke Parke Davis Award ceremony in Freiburg (1987)

Henri Nannen (born December 25, 1913 in Emden , † October 13, 1996 in Hanover ) was a German publisher and publicist . He was the founder, long-time publisher and editor-in-chief of Stern magazine .

Life

Training and beginnings as a journalist

Henri Nannen, son of police officers Klaas Nannen and Elise Nannen, b. Buitenduif, completed an apprenticeship as a bookseller , studied art history in Munich from 1934 to 1938 and gained his first professional experience as a freelancer in the specialist newspaper Die Kunst des Verklers Hugo Bruckmann . He began his journalistic career at the Reichsender München . During the 1936 Olympic Games he was the stadium announcer in Berlin . He also worked for Olympia-Film GmbH as a spokesman in Leni Riefenstahl's two-part Olympic film . At this time, Nannen was banned from working and was expelled from the university for resisting state power. It was not until Bruckmann intervened in 1937 that it was lifted.

During the Second World War he served in the Luftwaffe as a war correspondent in the propaganda company , as far as known in the Südstern department of the SS standard Kurt Eggers . This was concerned with propaganda against the Western Allies in Italy. The Südstern sub-unit symbol is said to have been the model for the logo of the later Stern magazine . In 1944 his novel Störfeuer von MI71 appeared in the series War Library of German Youth (Volume 144). From 1939 to 1945 156 Landserhefte in this series were published by Steiniger Verlag in Berlin; Fritz Otto Busch and Otto Mielke were among the authors .

After the war, Nannen founded the daily Hannoversche Latest News in 1946 , and was its editor until 1947. From 1947 to 1949 he was editor-in-chief of the Hannoversche Abendpost . In the state elections in Lower Saxony in 1947 he stood for the FDP in the constituency of Lingen , but was defeated by the candidate of the center , Gregor Dall .

Editor-in-chief and publisher of Stern

In 1948 Nannen started the illustrated star from the youth magazine Zick-zack . As early as 1951 he sold his shares in Stern , among others to the printer owner Richard Gruner and the weekly newspaper Die Zeit von Gerd Bucerius . From 1949 to 1980 he was editor-in-chief of Stern , until 1983 he was its publisher. In the beginning, Kurt Zentner , the founder and first editor-in-chief of the National Socialist magazine Der Stern, worked alongside Nannen for half a year as his deputy. Under Nannen's commitment, the illustrated star became Europe's largest circulation magazine. The star caused public controversy through its reports .

An example of this is the offer of 100,000 DM initiated by Nannen for the return of a Riemenschneider Madonna that was stolen in the Bavarian municipality of Volkach . The star wrote in 1962: “... we decided to suspend the sum of 100,000 DM for the return of the Riemenschneider Madonna ... The star will hand this 100,000 marks over to the person who enables us to return the Madonna in the Rosary to the Volkach community, regardless of person. We assure the perpetrators or their intermediaries absolute secrecy. ”The appeal sparked a big debate in the German feature pages. Nannen was reported several times for receiving stolen goods, but was able to win all of the lawsuits. The so-called Madonna robbery was dissolved in 1963 when the work of art was found.

In December 1970, around 15 to 20 million viewers watched a television duel between Nannen, who tended to affirm Willy Brandt's policy , and the presenter of ZDF magazine Gerhard Löwenthal , who rejected Brandt's policy. Löwenthal accused Nannen of employing a "man called Weidemann " who hanged a partisan and an innocent hostage during the war in Bevilacqua, northern Italy , and that Nannen himself was involved in this war crime. Nannen took legal action against this allegation and the Stern used its reporters to clarify this case. They were able to locate the two German NCOs responsible for the crime and also discovered a seventy-page manuscript that journalists from Axel Springer Verlag had put together a year and a half earlier and that contained these incriminating allegations. The allegations contained therein, however, were too vague and unproven for Axel Springer and World Editor-in-Chief Herbert Kremp to be published. After it turned out that the texts published by Löwenthal and his colleague Meyer literally matched Springer's Nannen dossier in long passages, the parties reached an agreement in court. Löwenthal and the ZDF publicly stated that “careful research” had shown “that neither Weidemann nor a member of his unit was responsible for or involved in interrogations, death sentences and executions”, and took those in connection with the incidents of Bevilacqua against Hans Weidemann and against the political credibility of Henri Nannen in all forms.

In 1970 Nannen donated the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize . In 2005, this media prize was included in the reporting category of the newly created Henri Nannen Prize . In 1983, Nannen took responsibility for the scandal surrounding the forged Hitler diaries by Konrad Kujau when he publicly accused himself of violating journalistic due diligence. Nannen is portrayed by Richard Wilson in the British television series Hitler for Sale , based on the nonfiction book by Robert Harris .

Activity as a patron

On the occasion of his 70th birthday, the passionate art collector and his wife Martha Nannen donated their important art collection, which mainly consisted of paintings and sculptures by German Expressionists, to a foundation in their East Frisian hometown Emden. The specially built art gallery in Emden was opened in 1986. In 1989 he was made an honorary citizen of his hometown, to which he had also returned in the 1980s.

Private

He was married to Eske Nannen (née Nagel) for the third time in 1990 , who was the managing director of the Kunsthalle in Emden until 2016.

Henri Nannen has a son, Christian Nannen (* 1946), co-owner of the Hamburg suitcase manufacturer Travelite . His daughter - and thus Henri Nannen's granddaughter - is the Hamburg journalist Stephanie Nannen.

Awards

  • 1963 honorary citizenship of the city of Volkach
  • 1975 Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class
  • 1989 Large Federal Cross of Merit
  • 1989 honorary citizenship of the city of Emden
  • 1991 Lower Saxony Prize for Culture
  • 1995 Maecenas honor of the working group of independent cultural institutes e. V. - AsKI

See also

literature

Own writings
  • Henri Nannen: Nuisance fire from "M 17". A flak soldier passes his trial by fire . Steiniger-Verlag, Berlin 1944.
To life and work
Interviews and discussions
  • Gero von Boehm : Henri Nannen. June 17, 1983 . Interview in: Encounters. Images of man from three decades . Collection Rolf Heyne, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-89910-443-1 , pp. 26–33.
  • Talks 1991 . u. a. with Klaus von Dohnanyi, Henri Nannen, John Neumeier, Dr. Klaus Murmann, Uwe Seeler u. Giorgio Armani, oA, Egon Zehnder International, Hamburg 1992, o. ISBN

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Walter Habel (Ed.): Who is who? The German who's who. XV. Edition of Degeners who is it ?, Berlin 1967, p. 1364.
  2. ↑ Habbo Knoch, The long duration of propaganda, p. 213. In: History for readers: popular historiography in Germany in the 20th century, volume 2004 and Südstern leaflets in the holdings of the Berlin State Library
  3. ^ Henri Nannen: Disturbance fire from "M 17". A flak soldier passes his trial by fire . Steiniger-Verlag Berlin, 1944. The country books of the series “War Library of German Youth” were intended to inspire young men for war. "This struggle will decide the fate of the next 1,000 years of German history," says the blurb. The Führer had explained that and nobody should stand back. Nannen's story tells of young corporal Hans Pleschke, who courageously drives the last opponents out of the bunker "M17" on the French side of the Rhine. Reading sample: “Pleschke lay flat on his stomach. He scratched a notch in his belt with his penknife, and when the line cuts with the edge of the bunker, the explosive charge is hanging just above the loopholes. It is a daring plan that he has come up with, it could cost his life. But it's the last load, now he has to go all out. He sets the fuse for four seconds and lowers the belt to the mark. With all his might he presses himself against the cover. The MG is pounding uninterruptedly towards the river. ”The complete text is available as a PDF at: http://www.m.medien-gesellschaft.de/NANNEN.pdf
  4. ↑ Nils Minkmar : The double lucky bag. How Henri Nannen invented the "star" . In: Lutz Hachmeister / Friedemann Siering: The gentlemen journalists. The elite of the German press after 1945 . CH Beck, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-47597-3 , pp. 185-195, here pp. 194f.
  5. ↑ a b Rainer Zeh: The Madonna robber gang, documentation. Norderstedt: Books on Demand; Edition: 1 (October 27, 2011), pp. 41ff, ISBN 978-3-8448-0221-4
  6. ^ Haug von Kuenheim : Löwenthal raised the white flag. “Stern” boss Nannen won over the ZDF presenter . In: Die Zeit Nr. 44, October 29, 1971 (accessed January 31, 2011).
  7. ^ Portrait of the Hamburger Abendblatt, October 13, 2007
  8. ↑ Managing Director of Travelite Imprint of the Travelite website
  9. ↑ The author was the stern editor for over 20 years (until 1988) . Particularly on pages 240-340, he repeatedly comes up with Nannen. Schwarberg does not paint him in black and white, but emphasizes Nannen's awareness of power, his tendency to boast, and his strong vanity.
personal data
SURNAME Nannen, Henri
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German publisher and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Emden
DATE OF DEATH October 13, 1996
Place of death Hanover