Jakob Funke

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Jakob Funke (born May 4, 1901 in Altendorf ; † February 1, 1975 in Essen - Bredeney ) was a German publisher , journalist and entrepreneur .

Life

Jakob Funke was born in a workers 'apartment in the workers' colony of Kronenberg in Altendorf, which was later incorporated into the city of Essen in August 1901. Funke was one of six children of the Krupp locksmith Johann Heinrich Funke and his wife Bertha. Jakob Funke married his first wife Katharina in 1926, from whose marriage the daughter Gisela married Holthoff emerged. After the death of his first wife, Funke remarried. With his second wife Rosemarie he had three more daughters: Renate Schubries, Ute de Graffenried and Petra Grotkamp (married to Günther Grotkamp since 1986 ).

After finishing school and without a proper degree or academic training, Funke worked as a journalist in Essen. From 1915 he first worked for the Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung RWZ and in 1926 became an editor at Essener Anzeiger, which, like RWZ, belonged to the Reismann-Grone- Verlag in Essen. When the National Socialists forced the end of the Essen Gazette in 1941, he was its editor-in-chief. He joined the NSDAP in April 1941 at the request of his employer at the time, the German news office , where he worked as an office manager .

After the end of World War II , Funke worked as a journalist for the Ruhr Zeitung published by the British occupation authorities , for which he wrote until February 1946. He then continued to work in Essen for the SPD party sheet Rhein-Echo, which was published by Dietrich Oppenberg . After he founded the Neue Ruhr Zeitung NRZ on July 13, 1946 , Funke followed him there and became the first local manager. During this time he got to know the editor-in-chief of the NRZ, Erich Brost .

Funke, who joined the CDU after the war , founded the daily Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ) together with journalist and social democrat Erich Brost in 1948 . Both owned 50 percent of the company shares in the publishing house. In 1960 Funke brought Günther Grotkamp, ​​his future son-in-law, to WAZ and together with him drove the start of the WAZ newspaper group .

Funke was the publishing director and co-editor of the WAZ until the end of his life. A year after his death, the company was renamed the newspaper group WAZ.

Jakob Funke, who died four days after his second wife Rosemarie, was buried in the Bredeney cemetery in Essen.

Honors

In 2017, the area at the newly built corporate headquarters of the Funke media group in Essen's west quarter was named Jakob-Funke-Platz.

literature

  • Bernd Haunfelder : North Rhine-Westphalia. Land and People 1946-2006: A Biographical Handbook . Aschendorff-Verlag, Münster 2006, ISBN 978-3-402-06615-7 , p. 161 .
  • Erwin Dickhoff: Essen heads . Ed .: City of Essen - Historical Association for City and Monastery of Essen. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8375-1231-1 , p. 112 .
  • Michael Weeke: the architect of success . Ed .: Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung; 70 years of WAZ - anniversary edition. Essen March 31, 2018.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Elisabeth Klaus (Ed.) Et al .: Media women from the very beginning. “We were the rubble women in this profession”. Edition Ebersbach in eFeF-Verlag, Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-905493-42-X , p. 233.
  2. ^ Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung: The founders
  3. ^ Katharina Heimeier: Ownership structures of German newspaper publishers. A look at the development and organization of classic family publishers in comparison with alternative forms of ownership. De Gruyter, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-030156-4 . P. 153.
  4. ↑ Erich Schumann is dead: co-owner of the WAZ media group died in the hospital: oldest adversary of "Krone" boss Hans Dichand news.at, January 22, 2007, accessed May 25, 2020.
  5. ↑ Press release of the city of Essen from September 20, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Spark, Jakob
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German publisher, journalist and entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH May 4, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH eat
DATE OF DEATH 1st February 1975
Place of death Germany