Toby E. Rodes
Toby E. Rodes (born October 25, 1919 in Frankfurt am Main as Toby Edward Rosenthal ; † April 20, 2013 in Basel ) was a German communications expert and author. He also worked as a management consultant and journalist and was the founder of an international public relations and marketing agency.
Life
Toby Rodes' father, Charles A. Rosenthal, banker and businessman, became the savior of Philipp Holzmann AG in Frankfurt after the Great Depression of 1928 . He was a 3rd generation American with German and Hungarian roots and had studied law in Munich. Paintings by American grandfather Toby Edward Rosenthal , a world-famous painter of his time, hang in many large museums in the United States. His frequently published portrait of the Johann Sebastian Bach family left a lasting mark on the composer's image.
The mother, née Veit, came from a combination of old English nobility with a German-Jewish family and was a celebrated actress before marriage. Cultural diversity, multilingualism - that was a matter of course in the Rosenthal family. In 1934, a biology teacher gave an anti-Semitic lecture to Toby's class at the Lessing Gymnasium in Frankfurt . The boy made a row and left school forever. He went to French-speaking Switzerland to Lake Geneva , where he took an English Abitur, then to London in 1936, to the London School of Economics , and finally to the USA in New York in 1937.
He was married to WE Rodes-Bauer for 40 years.
Act
Rodes came back to Europe during the war and worked first under General C. Powell on the command staff of the " Psychological Warfare " department of the 12th US Army Group, then on the command staff of "Information Control" under Lucius D. Clay , where you can meet the Reconstruction of the German media concerned. From 1950 to 1955 he acted as diplomat and head of information for the Marshall Plan in the Federal Republic of Germany and made and u. a. PR for the Schuman Plan , the original forerunner of the EU, produced films etc. a. directed exhibitions.
From 1955 to 1966, Toby E. Rodes was a member of the executive board of Knoll International, responsible for its activities outside of North and Central America, in particular managing the subsidiaries in Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Since then he has not missed the opportunity to regularly attend the important furnishing fairs as a reporter for design magazines and to appear as a design competition juror.
At the same time, from 1953 to 1975 he was a member of the supervisory board of the American public relations agency Julius Klein , known for handling particularly explosive international business-political PR assignments, also for large German companies and the Bonn government. In 1966 he founded the Toby E. Rodes Consultants Agency in Basel, which acts as a full-service agency providing advice and execution, not least for the development of sophisticated corporate identity programs.
Honors
As co-founder of the Berlin International Film Festival in 1951 and later the official representative of the United States, Toby E. Rodes was welcomed as a guest of honor at the 60th Berlinale . The Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) is an A-category film festival that takes place annually in Berlin and is one of the world's most important events in the film industry.
On December 1, 2005, he received the Wilhelm Leuschner Medal from the State of Hesse . With this, the state of Hesse paid tribute to Rode's services to the democratization and reconstruction of Germany after the Second World War . Other awards that he received were the Medaille de la Reconnaissance Française , the US Bronze Star and the Croix de guerre avec étoile d'argent, Luxembourg.
literature
- Toby E. Rodes: To America and back. Memories of an American European . Verlag Huber Frauendfeld, ISBN 978-3-7193-1533-7
- Toby E. Rodes: 11 theses on communication . Author Verlag Remagen, ISBN 3-88540-025-1
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Rodes, Toby E. |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German manager |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 25, 1919 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Frankfurt am Main |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 20, 2013 |
| Place of death | Basel |