Walter Hagemann

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Walter Hagemann (born January 16, 1900 in Euskirchen , † May 16, 1964 in Potsdam ) was a German journalist and journalist .

job

Hagemann studied politics, history, philosophy and economics at the Universities of Münster , Munich and Leipzig . He received his doctorate in 1921 or 1922 under Friedrich Meinecke . Working as a journalist since 1923, he made several trips to Asia and Africa and from 1927 worked as an editor for foreign policy at Germania , the Center Party's daily newspaper in Berlin . From 1934 until the ban in 1938 he was editor-in-chief of Germania . He then worked as the editor of a foreign press service in the " Heide Office ", which was subordinate to the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda . The office was headed by the German national press and propaganda specialist Walther Heide , who had come to terms with the National Socialists as president of the " German Newspaper Association " (DZV). Various press services and foreign participations were coordinated in the "Heide Office", which should not be identified as direct undertakings of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry. Hagemann published the anti-Semitic World Press Service on behalf of the Propaganda Ministry . Hagemann's preoccupation with newspaper science questions probably began in the “Heide Office”, which was closed in the summer of 1944 as “not war important”.

From October 1945 Hagemann initially worked as an editor for the Neue Zeitung in Munich. In the spring of 1946 he took over the vacant management of the Institute for Newspaper Studies (later: Journalism) at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster and at the same time worked as a press officer for the local government. In May 1948 he was appointed a regular associate professor . He is considered to be one of the pioneering specialist scholars in the expansion of older newspaper studies into general journalism. Günter Kieslich , Winfried B. Lerg , Walter J. Schütz and Michael Schmolke are among his students . Hagemann, who was very interested in the cinema as a social phenomenon, was u. a. active in the council of the voluntary self-regulation of the film industry, which he left because of the approval of the controversial film " The Sinner ". The influential magazine filmkritik emerged from Hagemann's film seminar at the Münster Journalism Institute . In 1956 he founded the journal Publizistik together with Emil Dovifat .

With the "Nestor of newspaper science", Emil Dovifat, Hagemann came into clear political and professional competition in the course of the 1950s. Through his film studies, empirical surveys ( The social situation of the German journalist class ) and his standard work Journalism in the Third Reich (1948), Hagemann had distinguished himself as a leading representative of journalism at the time. In Hagemann's sensational pamphlet Does the press give up? (1957) there were violent attacks on newspaper publishers, while Dovifat, who teaches in Berlin, promoted a partnership with the publishers. Hagemann's appointment to the University of Munich failed in the mid-1950s due to resistance from the Süddeutsche Zeitung .

Due to his commitment to the “ Kampf dem Atomtod ” movement and his contacts in the GDR , Hagemann was withdrawn from teaching in 1959 by the North Rhine-Westphalian Minister of Education, Werner Schütz . After a trial before the NRW State Administrative Court (sentence of "definitive removal from service" and "the loss of all pension rights") and the threat of prosecution on the basis of an "adulterous relationship" with a female student fled Hagemann on 14 April 1961 on Prague in the GDR, where he held a professorship for political economy at Humboldt University until 1964 . Due to his poor health, Hagemann's retirement on September 1, 1964, had already been decided upon, but he died of heart failure in May of that year. His grave is in the cemetery on Goethestrasse in Potsdam-Babelsberg .

Hagemann's successor as director of the Münster Journalism Institute, Hendricus "Henk" Prakke , published Hagemann's "Fundamentals of Journalism" with new comments in 1966. Otherwise, Hagemann's achievements and biography were largely forgotten because of his transfer to the GDR until the 1980s.

Political career

Hagemann was a member of the center during the Weimar Republic . After 1945 he was a founding member of the CSU , after moving to Münster he then switched to the CDU .

After taking part in meetings and demonstrations of the then West German extra-parliamentary opposition and political appearances in the GDR, he was expelled from the CDU in 1958. In 1954 he became a member of Karl Graf von Westphalen's national-neutralist German club in 1954 . In 1962 he became a member of the Eastern CDU . In 1961 he rated the construction of the Berlin Wall as a "peacekeeping measure". Hagemann wrote a. a. Article for the Deutsche Volkszeitung and the GDR newspaper Neue Zeit .

Publications (in selection)

  • Basics of journalism. Munster 1947.
  • Journalism in the Third Reich. A contribution of the methodology of mass leadership. Hamburg 1948.
  • The newspaper as an organism. A guide. Heidelberg 1950.
  • From the myth of the crowd. A contribution to the psychology of the public. Heidelberg 1951.
  • The film. Essence and shape. Heidelberg 1952.
  • Remote listening and watching TV. An introduction to broadcasting. Heidelberg 1954.
  • (Ed.): The social situation of the German journalist class, especially its development since 1945. Düsseldorf 1956.
  • (Ed.): The German magazine of the present. Munster 1957.
  • (Ed.): Is the press giving up? Munich 1957.
  • (Ed.): Film visitors and newsreel. Emsdetten 1959.
  • Basics of journalism. As an introduction to the teaching of social communication, newly edited by Henk Prakke with the collaboration of Winfried B. Lerg and Michael Schmolke . Munster 1966.

literature

  • Wilmont Haacke:  Hagemann, Walter. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1966, ISBN 3-428-00188-5 , p. 468 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Lutz Hachmeister : Theoretical journalism. Studies on the history of communication science in Germany. Wissenschaftsverlag Spiess, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-89166-044-8 .
  • Stephanie Heinecke: Walter Hagemann's technical understanding. Theory development in journalism after 1945. Saarbrücken 2008, ISBN 978-3-639-02444-9 .
  • Anja Pasquay: Between tradition and a new beginning. Walter Hagemann in Münster 1946–1959. In: Rüdiger vom Bruch and Otto B. Roegele (eds.): From newspaper studies to journalism. Biographical and institutional stages in German newspaper studies in the first half of the 20th century. Frankfurt am Main 1986, pp. 249-273, ISBN 3-89228-039-8 .
  • Heinz Ungureit : The resistance of the Hagemann clique. In: Rolf Aurich et al .: Theodor Kotulla. Director and critic. Munich 2005 (= edition text + kritik ), pp. 7–19, ISBN 3-88377-794-3 .
  • Thomas Wiedemann: Walter Hagemann. Rise and fall of a politically ambitious journalist and journalist (= theory and history of communication science , 12), Herbert von Halem Verlag, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-86962-074-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rudolf Stöber: Emil Dovifat, Karl d'Ester and Walter Hagemann . In: Wolfgang Duchkowitsch et al. (Ed.): The spiral of silence. On dealing with National Socialist newspaper science . Münster: Lit 2004, pp. 123-144, ISBN 3-8258-7278-5 .
  2. ^ Willi A. Boelcke: War Propaganda 1939–1941. Secret ministerial conferences in the Reich Propaganda Ministry. DVA, Stuttgart 1966, p. 64.
personal data
SURNAME Hagemann, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German newspaper scholar
DATE OF BIRTH January 16, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Euskirchen
DATE OF DEATH May 16, 1964
Place of death Potsdam