Robert Platow

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Robert Kurt Albert Platow (born May 7, 1900 in Hamburg , † December 3, 1982 in Chur , Switzerland ) was a German business journalist. He was the founder and editor of the Platow Brief , the oldest and largest business background service in German.

Life

Until 1945

After graduating from high school in Hamburg-Eppendorf , Platow studied economics at the universities of Hamburg and Kiel. In Kiel he worked for a short time as an assistant at the Institute for the World Economy (IfW), which was founded by privy councilor Bernhard Harms in 1914. Bernhard Harms he was in 1927 with a socio-economic work entitled The economic news in their nature and their significance for Dr. rer. pole. PhD .

In 1926 he worked as a trainee in the Kieler Zeitung and in 1927 in the trade department of the Magdeburgische Zeitung , for which he worked as a trade correspondent in Berlin from 1934 to 1944. In Berlin, Platow also worked for leading newspapers at the time such as the Berliner Tageblatt , the Vossische Zeitung , the Frankfurter Zeitung , the Kölnische Zeitung and the Pester Lloyd .

In addition, Platow published his own business correspondence, to which a confidential information service under the title Economic Private Information was attached. After 1933, the Nazi regime's desire to keep economic information secret led to difficulties; In 1939 the economic private information was banned. During the war , Platow published the special economic service information service .

Since confidential information letters were not taken into account in the regulations of the British military government on press licensing, Platow was able to reissue his information service, the Platow letter , from Hamburg as early as 1945 and provide the German economy with current news and exclusive information. Thanks to his good contacts both with the economy and with Bonn ministries, Platow also received some confidential information. In 1951 the Platow Brief had almost 2,000 subscribers at a price of DM 300 to 350  per month and achieved an annual net profit of DM 212,000 (around 542,000 euros based on today's purchasing power).

Platow affair

After Platow had published a first draft bill for a planned antitrust law in 1951 , the so-called "Platow Affair" occurred: Platow's office and private rooms were searched, Platow and his colleague Arno Wegrich came on suspicion of active bribery and betrayal of secrets at the end of August Until the beginning of October 1951 44 days in pre-trial detention, from which they were only released after bail of 100,000 DM (Platow) or 5000 DM (Wegrich). This approach met with lively public criticism, not least because § 353c StGB (betrayal of secrets), according to which the passing on of confidential official documents could be punished with up to ten years in prison , was a law from the Nazi era.

The affair had a parliamentary aftermath; In 1951 and 1952, the so-called Platow Committee of Inquiry in the German Bundestag dealt with the “examination of abuses in the federal administration” in connection with the above-mentioned events. In 1953, Platow and four other journalists were charged with active bribery and inducement to criminal acts in office and against fifteen federal employees for serious passive bribery , theft and removal of documents before the Bonn Regional Court . However, there was no longer any conviction because in November 1952 all parliamentary groups in the German Bundestag, with the exception of the KPD, had introduced a draft amnesty law that was supposed to exempt confidential information from being passed on until the end of 1951. Since this is an individual law, the constitutionality of this "Lex Platow" was controversial. Nevertheless, the law was passed on July 29, 1953, but Federal Justice Minister Thomas Dehler , like his successor Fritz Neumayer , who was appointed after the federal elections in 1953 , refused to sign the law. The Platow amnesty was finally regulated in Section 8 of the Law on Exemption from Punishment in 1954 , which exempted any transfer of official matters before January 1, 1952.

In a decision of December 15, 1959, the Federal Constitutional Court declared Section 8 of the StFG to be compatible with the Basic Law. In view of its numerically limited scope of application, § 8 StFG could nevertheless not deny the character of a general legal sentence applicable to an indefinite number of cases. Nor is it an inadmissible individual law .

Later years

In 1967 Platow sold his company to Bertelsmann , and the editorial team moved from Hamburg to Frankfurt am Main. In 2003 Bertelsmann and the specialist publishers also sold the Platow Brief, which from then on belonged to the science publisher Springer Science + Business Media . With retroactive effect from January 1, 2013, the long-standing publisher Albrecht F. Schirmacher acquired the Platow Brief as part of a management buy-out , which has since been part of the PLATOW Medien GmbH founded by Schirmacher.

Platow retired to Switzerland in the 1970s and died there in 1982. Platow is the father of business journalist and financial author Fleur Platow (* 1944).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Platov Letter. Albrecht F. Schirmacher, January 30, 2014, accessed January 30, 2014 .
  2. ^ Platow - The state . In: Der Spiegel . No. 36 , 1951, pp. 6-7 ( online ).
  3. ↑ a b Collision in Karlsruhe . In: Der Spiegel . No. 3 , 1955, pp. 15 ( online ).
  4. ↑ Decision of the Federal Constitutional Court on Section 8 of the Law on Exemption from Punishment 1954 (PDF) Federal Law Gazette I of January 25, 1960, p. 45
  5. ↑ BVerfG, decision of the First Senate of December 15, 1959 - 1 BvL 10/55 margin no. 34, 50
personal data
SURNAME Platow, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Platow, Robert Kurt (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German business journalist
DATE OF BIRTH May 7, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH 3rd December 1982
Place of death Chur