Wolfgang Venohr

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Wolfgang Horst Walter Venohr (born April 15, 1925 in Berlin ; † January 26, 2005 there ) was a German journalist and writer .

Life

After attending a humanistic grammar school, Venohr volunteered for the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler of the Waffen SS in 1941 at the age of sixteen . At the end of the war he held the rank of senior junior officer (officer candidate). After the war, Venohr studied history and German at the Free University of Berlin and received his doctorate in 1954 with his thesis The operational leadership of General Ludendorff in the mirror of German specialist criticism . This was followed by work as a volunteer and editor at Nürnberger Nachrichten , as well as sales manager at UFA-Werbefilm and chief dramaturge at the television company of the Berlin daily newspapers . From 1965 he was TV editor-in-chief ( Stern TV , Lübbe) for many years and a successful film and book author. From 1969 to 1974 he became known to a wide audience as the only West German journalist who reported directly from the GDR . He later lived as a freelance journalist and publicist in Berlin.

Central themes of Venohr were the history of Prussia and the military resistance against Adolf Hitler . In 1974, Venohr and the historian Heinz Höhne produced a three-part series about the Waffen-SS for Stern-TV , which was broadcast on ARD . Venohr defended the series against the accusation of historical revisionism , which was made in particular by Rupert Neudeck in the Catholic magazine Funkkorrespondenz : "We have never concealed the fact that we consider the collective judgment of the soldiers of the Waffen-SS to be wrong and unjust." His own membership in the Waffen-SS, Venohr described in his 2002 memoir Die Abwehrschlacht .

In 1982 Venohr brought out the book The German Unity Comes Out, in which he brought together authors of different political origins (“from left to right”). Peter Kratz called this and other related publications " cross front -Buch coalitions" and saw in Venohr a prominent protagonists of this policy.

In 1989 Venohr founded the Straube publishing house in Erlangen with Hellmut Diwald , Günther Deschner and others .

With Alfred de Zayas , author of the book Die Wehrmacht Investigation Center , he discussed war crimes of the Allies in a documentary series for ARD in 1983 . In the same year a two-part film, produced together with Michael Vogt , was released Why the Germans Voted Hitler and Why the Germans Followed Hitler .

Venohr wrote bestsellers such as Prussian Profile (together with Sebastian Haffner ) and Fridericus Rex , The Soldier King , Ludendorff , Napoleon in Germany , Memory of a Youth , The Defense Battle , Stauffenberg and other non-fiction books on historical and political topics.

The first part of his “Jugenderinnerungen” (memory of a youth) appeared in 1997. According to Henning Schlueter, it was “teeming” with sometimes comical “pathetic platitudes”. It is "fatally reminiscent of a dusty Wandervogel breviary". In the search for the distant young people, Venohr “unfortunately got astray”. The second part of “Jugenderinnerungen” (The Defensive Battle) was published in 2002 by the weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit .

In 1987 the “background service” of the SPD described him as a “right-wing radical” who sees himself as a Niekisch student. The historian Peter Brandt , on the other hand, spoke in his obituary in the Junge Freiheit of an "independent spirit, whose at the same time emphatically Prussian and black-red-gold national patriotism was free of bourgeois bias and reactionary philistineism".

Wolfgang Venohr died in January 2005 at the age of 79 in Berlin. He found his final resting place in the Schmargendorf cemetery .

Fonts

  • The Little Eagle Feather (youth book), 1965
  • Half Prussia / Half Saxony , 1972
  • Uprising in the Tatras , 1979
  • together with Sebastian Haffner : Prussian Profiles , 1980
  • Documents of German existence , 1980
  • Fritz the King , 1981
  • as editor: German unity is sure to come. 1982
  • Fridericus Rex , 1985
  • Stauffenberg. Symbol of Resistance , 1987
  • The soldier king. Revolutionary on the throne , 1988
  • Uprising of the Slovaks. The freedom struggle of 1944 , 1992
  • Patriots against Hitler. The Road to July 20, 1944 , 1994
  • The great king. Friedrich II in the Seven Years' War , 1995
  • Memory of a Youth 1997
  • The defensive battle. Memories , 2002

He also wrote numerous articles in the following papers: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , Die Welt , Die Zeit , Bunte , Berliner Morgenpost , MUT , Neue Politik and Junge Freiheit .

Awards

literature

  • Dieter Stein (Ed.): A life for Germany. Commemorative publication for Wolfgang Venohr 1925–2005 , Edition JF, Berlin 2005.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Venohr: Interview with Rudi Dutschke stern-tv (via YouTube) April 1968
  2. ^ Professional: Wolfgang Venohr . In: Der Spiegel . No. 40 , 1980, pp. 284 ( online - 29 September 1980 ).
  3. ^ Peter Kratz: Right Comrades. Neoconservatism in the SPD. Berlin 1995, p. 171.
  4. ↑ Henning Schlüter: "Now everything will be fine!" Fähnleinführer and drummer boys: A youth in the young people. In: FAZ, May 27, 1997, see also: [1] .
  5. ↑ Peter Kratz: The Basics of the Spiritual-Moral Turn. Social cuts, history revision and museum donation. In: Background Service / Parliamentary-Political Press Service - ppp (edited by the SPD), February 9, 11, 18 and 20, 1987.
  6. ↑ Peter Brandt: Obituaries for Wolfgang Venohr → Dialog , Junge Freiheit, February 4, 2005.
  7. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 . P. 453.
personal data
SURNAME Venohr, Wolfgang
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Venohr, Wolfgang Horst Walter (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 2005
Place of death Berlin