Kurt Magnus (radio pioneer)

Kurt Magnus (1917)

Kurt Magnus (born March 28, 1887 in Kassel , † June 20, 1962 in Wiesbaden ) was a German radio pioneer and administrative lawyer.

Life

Kurt Magnus studied at Oxford and Goettingen jurisprudence . In 1906 he became a member of the Corps Bremensia . Horst von Windheim , Carl Manfred Frommel and Eugen Boelling were among his contacts . Immediately after completing his legal traineeship, he received his doctorate in 1910 in Göttingen. iur. He then did his military service in the Oldenburg Dragoon Regiment No. 19 in Oldenburg . After participating in the First World War and passing the assessor exam, he opened a law practice in Berlin . He was the syndic of the Vox group and in 1923 one of the initiators of the Funk-Hour Berlin , the first German radio company.

Magnus was one of the authors of the Cologne radio magazine Werag and advocated transparency in radio license fees. In December 1926, 1.3 million listeners were registered in Germany who, as Magnus calculated, paid “7 pfennigs daily” in receiving licenses, 40% of which was received by the Deutsche Reichspost . A large part of the remaining 60%, according to Magnus, could unfortunately not be used to expand the broadcasting systems and the program because "very substantial contributions have to be paid for the authors ".

Kurt Magnus (left) as a prisoner in Oranienburg concentration camp, August 1933. Next to him: Hans Flesch , Heinrich Giesecke, Alfred Braun , Friedrich Ebert junior , Ernst Heilmann

After the "seizure of power" by the National Socialists on April 1, 1933, the National Socialist Reich Broadcasting Commissioner Gustav Krukenberg was commissioned to take over the management of the Reich Broadcasting Society alongside Kurt Magnus , whereupon Magnus resigned. In August 1933 Magnus was arrested along with Alfred Braun , Heinrich Giesecke and Hans Flesch for corruption and imprisoned in the Oranienburg concentration camp . Until the ruling in "Empire broadcasting process," he was 18 months in remand prison Moabit in custody . During the process, he was reported in Frankfurt a. M. Flesch was found guilty and sentenced to five months in prison and fines totaling 4,000 RM.

After the trial, Magnus was under political surveillance. Magnus worked for three years in a travel agency in Berlin, in 1939 he went to the Aryanized Wirgin company in Wiesbaden as managing director and was with the Dr. C. Schleussner Fotowerke in Frankfurt am Main .

From May 1945 he was government director at the regional president in Wiesbaden and head of the local economic department. From October 1945 he became regional director and from 1947 ministerial director and deputy minister in the Hessian Ministry of Economic Affairs ( cabinet floor ) and member of the supervisory board and then chairman of the State Collection Company for Public Goods (STEG) , in 1953 Magnus became chairman of the administrative board of Hessischer Rundfunk . He was also President of the Goethe Institute from 1951 to 1962 and Chairman of the ARD Historical Commission from 1954 to 1962 .

Honors

• Iron Cross 2nd and 1st class
• Knight's Cross of the House Order of Hohenzollern
• The honorary senator of the Technical University of Berlin was revoked from Magnus in March 1934.
• 1952: Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 1957: Large Cross of Merit with Star of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 1957: Goethe badge from the Hessian Ministry of Culture
• Goethe Medal from the Goethe Institute
• In 1962, the ARD donated the Kurt Magnus Prize for young journalists in his memory , which was awarded for the first time in 1963.

Fonts

• The radio in the Federal Republic and West Berlin. Development, organization, tasks, services: a collection of materials , Frankfurt / Main: Knecht, 1955
• One million tons of war material for peace: the story of the StEG , Munich: Pflaum, [1955]
• Three encounters , Viernheim: Verl. Viernheim, 1956

literature

• Magnus, Kurt. In: Robert Volz: Reich manual of the German society . The handbook of personalities in words and pictures. Volume 2: L-Z. Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, Berlin 1931, DNB 453960294 , p. 1180.
• HL Freiherr von Gemmingen-Hornberg: Ministerialdirigent i. R. Dr. Kurt Magnus † . In: Deutsche Corpszeitung 63 (1962), pp. 295-296
• Kurt Wagenführ:  Magnus, Kurt. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-428-00196-6 , p. 675 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Kurt Magnus: 19 contributions to life's work; [on the 70th birthday of Kurt Magnus on March 28, 1957] , Frankfurt a. M.: Hess. Radio, 1957
• Broadcasting trial and judgment of the Berlin Court of Appeal, 6th major criminal chamber of June 13, 1935

Web links

Commons : Kurt Magnus  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Kurt Magnus in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography at Hessischer Rundfunk
• Biography at the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation
• Kurt Magnus in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
• Magnus, Kurt. Hessian biography. (As of March 3, 2020). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
• Magnus, Kurt in the Frankfurt personal dictionary

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kösener Corpslist 1960, 39/1063
2. ^ Werag - Official organ of the Westdeutsche Rundfunk AG Cologne, Rufu-Verlag Cologne, issue No. 2 of December 10, 1926
3. ↑ Hessischer Rundfunk (ed.): Kurt Magnus. Five representations of his work. Festschrift for the 75th birthday of Dr. Kurt Magnus. Frankfurt am Main 1962
4. ↑ German Physics . In: Der Spiegel . No. 10 , 1980 ( online ).