Rolf Winter (journalist)

Rolf Winter (born October 10, 1927 in Lübeck , † September 29, 2005 in Hamburg ) was a German journalist and non-fiction author . He was editor-in-chief of Stern and GEO and advisor to the publishing houses Gruner and Jahr . After the Hitler diary scandal , he helped restore the Stern's damaged reputation .

Life

Rolf Winter spent his childhood in Lübeck on the "social fringes" in the poorest district and processed it in his book "Hitler came from the Dankwartsgrube ". He began to work as a journalist in Bonn in 1949 and became editor-in-chief of the Schleswig-Holstein newspaper . He switched to Illustrierte Kristall as chief reporter and was editor-in-chief of the health magazine Vital .

In 1967 he was United States - correspondent of the magazine Stern . In 1975 he switched to the newly founded reportage magazine GEO , became its editor-in-chief in 1976 and later co-editor .

In 1984 he went to Stern as editor-in-chief , succeeding Rolf Gillhausen and Peter Scholl-Latour . He helped repair the reputation of the magazine, which had been damaged by the publication of forged Hitler diaries. In 1988 he became editor-in-chief of Sports magazine . Afterwards he worked as chief advisor to the board of directors of Gruner + Jahr Verlag , occasionally writing for GEO . He also made a name for himself as an author of America-critical books. Most recently he lived secluded with his second wife in an old country house in Hoffeld near Bordesholm .

After 1995, Winter published a few portraits of cars in Sports magazine under the pseudonym Dankwart Grube .

In 1989 he published the book Ami go home , which was a personal settlement with the USA and quickly became a bestseller. More books followed. In some of them, Winter again dealt very critically with the USA; others deal with the political and social situation in Germany today, his commitment to pacifism - based on his own war experiences - and his childhood in National Socialist Germany.

He lived for a long time in Hamburg and Braderup on Sylt. Der Spiegel wrote in its obituary: Winter spoke of himself as a "workaholic" - and rightly so.

criticism

The America- critical books by Rolf Winters, such as Ami go home or Help: America! were in turn criticized. Winter was accused of a simple, America-hostile worldview. Dan Diner , a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem , accused Winter of equating Indian massacres with the Holocaust. Furthermore, his state-political point of view is criticized when, for example, he sees the USA as an “asset insurance company” and not a “historically grown state like the German one”.

Books (selection)

• Ami go home. Plea for parting with a violent country . Rasch and Röhring Verlag, Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-89136288-9
• The American imposition. Plea against the land of real capitalism . Wilhelm Heyne Verlag , Munich 1990, ISBN 978-3-453-04719-8
• Hitler came out of the Dankwartsgrube (and maybe comes back one day). A childhood in Germany. Rasch and Röhring Verlag, Hamburg 1991 // Paperback edition: Goldmann Verlag, Munich 1992 ISBN 3-442-12383-6
• God's own country? United States of America values, goals and realities. Rasch and Röhring Verlag, Hamburg 1991
• Who the hell is the state? Confessions, questions and outrages from a pacifist. Rasch and Röhring Verlag, Hamburg 1992
• No, this republic was not meant to be like that. The political culture of the Federal Republic. Rasch and Röhring Verlag, Hamburg 1994
• Little America. The Americanization of the German Republic . Rasch and Röhring Verlag, Hamburg 1995

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Der Spiegel from October 10, 2005
2. ↑ Help: America! . The time No. 44/1995
3. ↑ Dan Diner, Inverted Worlds. Anti-Americanism in Germany , Frankfurt am Main 1993, page 147

Web links

• Literature by and about Rolf Winter in the catalog of the German National Library
• "Gruner + Jahr mourns the loss of a great journalist: Former STERN and GEO editor-in-chief Rolf Winter (with photo) has died"