Kurt Stapelfeldt

Kurt Stapelfeldt (born August 30, 1898 in Hamburg , † November 28, 1985 in Hamburg ) was a German radio pioneer and journalist as the director of NORAG .

Life and work

After graduating from high school, Stapelfeldt began his studies at the University of Hamburg, which he successfully completed with a doctorate at the philosophical faculty. During his studies he was active in the Cheruskia armed forces . Stapelfeld came to Norag AG via the Hamburger Nachrichten, from which the Nordwestdeutsche Rundfunk (NWDR) later emerged.

At the age of just 26, he took over the role of the "second man" and, step by step, the commercial management of NORAG. In 1925 he became an authorized signatory, the following year a deputy member of the board and finally in 1929/30 he was an equal director alongside Hans Bodenstedt . Later he also became director of NORAG, which corresponds to the role of editor-in-chief, as well as its director. At the same time he was the head of the "Agriculture" department for many years. With his work he shaped large parts of the Hamburg program. Stapelfeldt came from the area around the " Quickborn ", the "Association of Friends of the Low German Language and Culture", and was very close to the "Low German Pope" Paul Wriede . Stapelfeldt also had good contacts with Hamburg's educational circles, not least through his cousin Ernst and his membership in Hamburg's oldest student association.

Together with the program manager Hans Bodenstedt and Stapelfeldt's doctoral supervisor Conrad Borchling (DVP), an expert in Low German philology at the local university, Stapelfeldt founded a radio adult education center in the summer of 1924, the " Hans-Bredow-Schule für Volkswissenschaften", which he directed also took over and opened as the first branch a "School of Low German", for which his fellow student Hans Böttcher can be considered the founding father. In cooperation with the Hamburg high school authorities and their head, Senator Emil Krause (SPD), Stapelfeld “invented” the school radio with NORAG.

In August 1932 he was finally appointed for a short time by the broadcasting commissioner of the interior minister to the programming department of the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft , but returned to NORAG when he got the opportunity to become its chief executive. He stayed there from January to March 1933 until he was dismissed after the Nazis came to power because his German-national political attitude no longer suited the time.

After the Second World War he worked on the board of the Hamburg-Mannheimer Versicherungs AG.

swell

• Halefeldt: NORAG , p. T33, p. T70.
• Wasmus: 765 Kilo Hertz , p. 25ff.
• Kurt Stapelfeldt: The idea of ​​a Low German adult education center and the radio - Die Norag 1924 , 5, p. (1ff.)
• Kurt Stapelfeldt: How the Hans Bredow School became!
• Wolfgang Bachofer and Wolfgang Beck: German and Low German Philology in Eckart Krause et al. (Ed.): Everyday life at university in the “Third Reich” . Berlin / Hamburg 1991, Vol. 2, pp. 642f., Pp. 647-651.
• Horst O. Halefeldt: School and educational radio in Germany , Frankfurt a. M. 1976, p. 14f.
• Joachim-Felix Leonhard: Program history of radio in the Weimar Republic , Munich 1997
• Program history NWDR , p. 48 ff
• Florian Huber: Re-education through radio - The re-education policy of the British occupying power in Germany using the example of NWDR 1945-1948 - Radio program history in the Weimar Republic , Munich 1997
• Ulrich Heitger: From time signals to political means of leadership - development tendencies and structures of broadcast news programs in the Weimar Republic , Münster 2003
• N3 broadcast on May 2, 1984: a radio pioneer remembers - Norag broadcasting director Dr. Kurt Stapelfeldt in conversation with NDR director Friedrich-Wilhelm Räuker , NDR television archive 1041093
• Organization chart of NORAG ( Memento from June 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 248 kB)