Ludwig Wronkow

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Ludwig Wronkow (born December 3, 1900 in Berlin ; died July 10, 1982 in Lisbon ) was a German-American journalist, press illustrator and cartoonist.

Life

Ludwig Wronkow was the older brother of the later journalist Georg Wronkow (1905-1989). The father Hugo Wronkow (1869–1909) was a real estate dealer and owner of three apartment buildings and died early, the mother Berta Ephraim (1879–1929) then had to look after the sons alone. Wronkow attended the Askanisches Gymnasium and other schools with little success and began an apprenticeship as a technical draftsman. In the last months of the war he was still a soldier in the reserve army, sided with the revolutionaries in the November Revolution and was briefly imprisoned.

Wronkow learned the journalistic trade in the Berliner Volks-Zeitung from Otto Nuschke and his boss from the service Karl Vetter . He was also introduced to the advertising business at Mosse-Verlag . Wronkow specialized in commentary drawing in the newspaper news. With the technical feasibility of newspaper photography, he also became a picture editor who viewed the submitted photos on a daily basis. During the years of the Weimar Republic he created around 3,000 drawings. His drawings were also printed in the Munzenberg newspapers . He was fined 50 RM for the cover illustration of Fried Hardy Worm's Dadaist book Das Bordell .

When power was handed over to the National Socialists , he saw the weak resistance of the Democrats and also the personal betrayal of Karl Vetter and fled to Paris on March 4, 1933 with small luggage, so his drawings were lost. He worked for the Illustrierte VU and the Materndienst France-Presse . In 1934 he went to Prague and worked there as a draftsman for the Prager Tagblatt , the emigrated Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ) and the emigrated Simplicus . On December 5, 1936, he found himself on the same issue of the German expatriation list as Thomas Mann .

During the Sudeten crisis in 1938, he fled to the USA with an entry visa; his brother did not follow him from France until 1941.

Wronkov's journalistic and organizational skills were in demand when he was hired in 1939 for sales in the Jewish German-speaking emigrant newspaper Aufbau . As head of the service , he managed to stabilize the newspaper and develop it into an important international German-language newspaper for the emigrants. Until 1941, the newspaper had to oppose the majority of German-Americans who were loyal to Reich Germans and loyal to Hitler . Wronkow wrote (under a pseudonym) in the construction of small contributions and drew picture stories, cartoons and his newsreel. He moved up the publishing hierarchy, became a member of the board and in 1965, succeeding Manfred George as managing director.

Wronkow made several long journeys in old age. In 1981 he received an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Berlin , and on this occasion a cross-section of his work was shown in the house on Lützowplatz . John Spalek conducted an interview with him lasting several hours in 1981, which is used as a substitute for the non-written autobiography. Wronkow died in Portugal during a stopover on a flight from Brazil to Switzerland.

literature

  • Hans Bohrmann (ed.); Michael Groth, Barbara Posthoff (arrangement): Ludwig Wronkow, Berlin - New York: journalist and caricaturist at Mosse and "Aufbau"; an illustrated life story . Munich: Saur, 1989 ISBN 3-598-21303-4
  • PEN Center for German-Speaking Authors Abroad (Ed.): Symposium Exil USA: March 20 and 21, 1985; in memoriam Ludwig Wronkow . Schriesheim: Albrecht 1985 ISBN 3-926360-02-X
  • Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of the German-speaking emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Politics, economy, public life . Munich: Saur, 1980, p. 836
  • Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945. Edited by the Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem. Saur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 394.
  • George Wronkow : Little Man in Big Times: Reports of a Life. Walter de Gruyter, 2008

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wronkow, Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American journalist, press illustrator and cartoonist
DATE OF BIRTH 3rd December 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH July 10, 1982
Place of death Lisbon