Walther Krause (journalist)

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Walther Krause (born January 17, 1937 in Frankfurt (Oder) ; † October 6, 2018 in Berlin ) was a German journalist , musicologist , program director and radio presenter .

Career

After the Second World War, Krause and his parents fled to Bad Homburg in western Germany ; his father was a pastor. Even before successfully completing his studies in musicology, he worked for the Hessischer Rundfunk , and in 1965 for the Saarländischer Rundfunk . From 1968 he worked for the former Südwestfunk (today Südwestrundfunk ) in Baden-Baden . From 1970, Walther Krause was editor-in-chief of the third radio program, the later SWF3 . He was succeeded by Peter Stockinger at the beginning of 1975 . In 1978 he switched to Deutschlandfunk (part of Deutschlandradio since 1990 ) in Cologne and worked there as the main department head for light music . At the end of 1995 he retired.

The Südwestfunk years

Krause was considered creative and eager to experiment. At Südwestfunk, he convinced the then radio director Manfred Häberlen against the initial resistance of the technology to the concept of self-propelled operation , in which a single person works simultaneously as editor, moderator and technician. Krause, who was 31 at the time, was in the USA in 1967 and observed this principle on several radio stations. At the end of 1968 he founded and hosted the "Stars and Hits Hit Parade " on Saturday evening in the first radio program , which, in addition to German hits, also contained international pop music. This show brought a great deal of listeners to the younger generation. Due to this success, Häberlen commissioned Walther Krause in 1969 to develop a new, special transmission format for young people on the third VHF transmitter chain from January 1, 1970 as part of a program redesign. This resulted in the Pop Shop , which was initially ridiculed in the company's own broadcasting company, but quickly established itself as a very popular youth program. The SWF took on a pioneering role in the German, exclusively public radio landscape, in which pop music was very rare. It seemed as if the growing youth had been forgotten as a target audience. In order to listen to current pop, which was booming at the time especially from Great Britain and the USA, it had to switch to foreign stations such as AFN , BFN or Radio Luxemburg .

Krause liked to look for his employees in unconventional ways. For example, he asked the then broadcasting supervisor of the record label Electrola , Frank Laufenberg , who was with an artist at the SWF for his doctorate appointment, about his impressions of the interview that had just been completed. After Laufenberg's criticism of the moderator's conversation, Krause replied: "If you have the feeling that you can do it better than the current moderator, why not do it for a week?" - and recruited the leading German rock and pop music expert from his job at the record company. After this trial week, Laufenberg was an integral part of the team for many years. To the later, successful TV presenter Hans Meiser , who also started at SWF under Krause, he said: "Mr. Meiser, it won't work for me, you would be better off on TV" - which is where he was right.

However, the task of the "inventor" of the youth magazine Pop Shop at that time was not without stumbling blocks: On the one hand, a modern, zeitgeist-oriented teenage format was to be created in the course of a program reform, but without the narrow, public-law format Principles and virtues to deviate. A not exactly easy balancing act in the first half of the 1970s, in which Walther Krause and the previously unusually free, rebellious style of his young radio presenters in the "entertainment complex" (this department was housed somewhat separately in the basement of the broadcasting house), occasionally housed special observation. In the beginning it wasn't possible without German pop music either, but it gradually disappeared from the program. But regardless of this, Krause continued to lead his department calmly with a long leash, demanding and promoting ideas, bringing completely new innovations, thereby increasing the number of listeners and increasing the loyalty of the audience. Soon more airtime and an enlarged team was necessary. The Pop Shop was not a full-time program, but an umbrella term for individual, different programs - it started, including Walther Krause, with four presenters every day at noon and ended in the late afternoon or early evening.

Even back then, Krause had a keen eye for talents and pearls from the heavily pulsating domestic and foreign popular music scene - for example, he discovered the band Santana or the currently completely unknown youngster as the first head of programming on German radio at the end of the 1960s Songwriter Reinhard Mey - today one would speak of an intensive “ airplay ” in order to increase the public awareness of the artists via radio. Krause pioneered the full-time pop wave SWF3, which went on air from January 1, 1975 and was directed by Peter Stockinger.

At Deutschlandfunk

In 1978 Walther Krause moved to the former Deutschlandfunk in Cologne as the main department head for light music. As Krause recalled, during his tenure his predecessor had clearly given preference to brass and marching tones over “student music” (as it was used to describe modern pop music), which he did not love . Walther Krause had to reform again, albeit not quite as extensively as with the SWF. And his corrections also took effect, afterwards Deutschlandfunk, with its newly developed jazz and pop formats, was much better off in terms of audience numbers than before the program reform. During his time at DLF, Krause experimented and pushed a lot - such as the program “Zwischenentöne”, which is still on the air every Sunday afternoon with a well-known guest and his own selection of music.

In private, Krause was seen as a reserved and modest person who avoided a big public stage and preferred to stay in the background.

Walther Krause died on October 6, 2018 in Berlin at the age of 81.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Radio legend and pop shop founder Walther Krause has died - obituary article in the insider radio magazine "RADIOSZENE" from October 22, 2018
2. ↑ Frank Laufenberg - POPSTOP
3. ^ Obituary on the death of Walther Krause - "RADIOSZEZNE" magazine of October 22, 2018
4. ↑ Pop Shop-Sendekomplex 3 in 1971 - also in the picture: Walther Krause, Frank Laufenberg
5. ↑ The Pop Shop team from the very beginning - from left to right: Guido Schneider, Walther Krause, Karlheinz Kögel and Frank Laufenberg
6. ↑ Deutschlandfunk - "Overtones"