At the weekly magazine star is already in a state of upheaval anyway, since January it has belonged to the media group RTL together with the publishing house Gruner + Jahr, there has been a new editor-in-chief since May, and now the past is knocking at the door again. The first public official act by Gregor Peter Schmitz, the new editor-in-chief, therefore includes a text on his own behalf. “Henri Nannen and us” is his name.
In it, Schmitz deals with the latest findings about the founder, long-time publisher and editor-in-chief of the star Henri Nannen, a defining figure of German post-war journalism, whose name still has a big reputation today. One of the most renowned journalism schools in Germany and one of the most important awards for journalists in Germany bear his name. A video contribution in the NDR format “Strg_F” brought up the table again last week, what has been known for a long time – Nannen’s Nazi past.
“These pictures are disgusting, they’re disgusting, and above all they serve a lot of anti-Semitic clichés.”
A lot has already been written about how Nannen, born in 1913, stood by the Nazis as a young man, says Schmitz – “about his role, for example, in Leni Riefenstahl’s famous ‘Olympia’ film from 1938, as the author of articles celebrating Adolf Hitler or as a member of a propaganda unit of the SS in Italy called ‘Südstern’https://www.sueddeutsche.de/medien/ star have reported about it again and again. New become public through the contribution of the NDR Images of the leaflets that Nannen was responsible for as a Nazi propagandist during the war. The researchers got them from the Berlin State Library. “Anti-Semitic, sexist and racist leaflets,” as Schmitz describes them. “These pictures are disgusting, they’re disgusting, and above all they serve a lot of anti-Semitic clichés.”
Henri Nannen in the 1940s as editor-in-chief of the “Abendpost” in Hanover.
(Photo: STR/AP)
Schmitz writes that every new finding must lead to previous assessments being called into question again and again. “As a magazine that was shaped by Henri Nannen, we want to engage in the debate as to whether we need to take a more critical look at the (complicated) person Nannen (…).” In the coming weeks you will star “openly struggling with the question” of how to rate Nannen, and “also whether he can continue to be the namesake of a school where young journalists are trained, whether one of the most renowned media prizes bears his name and whether Henri Nannen is our founding editor in the imprint should stay”. It has been planned for some time to mark the 75th birthday of starthe first edition of which appeared on August 1, 1948, to have “all facets” of Nannen’s activities during the Nazi years examined by experts – “and also a possible influence of Nannen on later reporting in the star“.
Gregor Peter Schmitz, who now manages the magazine together with Anna-Beeke Gretemeier, who is on parental leave, should start working on Nannen’s legacy in the star have found another big task – in addition to the many others that are pending in the editorial office. “The past is never dead, it’s not even past,” he quotes Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner as saying.