Publishing Houses and Publishers

The founder and boss of “Stern” magazine was one of the most important German journalists in post-war years. Under his direction, “Stern” became one of the highest-circulation magazines in Germany. The “Henri Nannen Prize”, which is awarded every year for outstanding performance in printed journalism, is also committed to the professional ethos of journalism.

Pictures instead of arguments

Shortly after the Second World War, in 1946, Henri Nannen – who was born in 1913 in Emden, East Frisia – established the daily newspaper Hannoversche Neuste Nachrichten. Soon afterwards he also took over the stricken teen magazine Zick-Zack. Admittedly he never intended to continue the teen magazine in that format. He had something completely different in mind: a glossy magazine intended to provide political information but be entertaining at the same time – for instance with the help of lavish photo spreads – the concept for which he had already drawn up a while ago: Stern. On 1st August 1948 Zick-Zack was published with a new bias and under a new name. The Stern star had risen.

By 1951 Nannen already had to sell the majority shares in his magazine, some of them to Die Zeit publisher Gerd Bucerius. However Nannen stayed in the position of Chief Editor until 1980. Nannen aimed to depict “the whole of life” in his magazine, not just a part of it, even if that part carried so much weight. He relied on the persuasion power of reportage and pictures more than the arguments in commentaries. There was not really another magazine that allocated as much space to photo reportage as Stern, which became the most-read glossy magazine of the post-war era. In the seventies it was published weekly with a circulation of 1.9 million copies. Today circulation has settled at one million.

The scandal surrounding the faked Hitler diaries

One reason for Stern’s success can be attributed to Nannen’s feel for themes with audience appeal. For instance several portraits of the 374 women who confessed to having had abortions were emblazoned on the title page of the 6th June 1971 issue – which was still banned in the Federal Republic at that time.

Another big title story was to deal Nannen’s journalistic career a harsh blow: on 28th April 1983 Stern published the supposed diaries of Adolf Hitler, which it had bought for eleven million marks. The magazine boastfully heralded the era of rewriting history. However it quickly became apparent that the diaries were the work of faker Konrad Kujau, an artist. The world’s media reported on this journalistic super-disaster – Stern was in deep disgrace. Nannen, who by then had long ago relinquished the position of Chief Editor and just worked as publisher, resigned from this post as well – he blamed himself for lack of due diligence in a journalistic sense. The affair even made it to cinemas in 1992, albeit only as a comedy: Uwe Ochsenknecht played the faker in Schtonk!, now called Knobel, Götz George played Willié the scandal reporter, even Harald Juhnke was in on it, as well as the inevitable Veronica Ferres. Schtonk! was nominated for an Oscar for the best non-English film.

Nannen’s legacy

It’s a well-known fact that every end has an inherent beginning: after leaving the Stern management team, Nannen – who was by then 70 years old – had the Kunsthalle art gallery built in his home town of Emden in 1986, in which he made his works of art from the German Expressionist era that he had collected over the decades accessible to the public. The gallery is now an artistic institution in East Frisia – since his death on 13th October 1996 it has been run by his third wife, Eske. Nannen’s legacy is enormous: for instance he started up the Hamburg School of Journalism, which was intended to train up-and-coming journalists for his own publishing house, more thoroughly than in the editorial team and more vocationally than at universities. In honour of Nannen the school, which is still guarantor for one of the best journalism courses, was given his name on his 70th birthday.

In the eighties Nannen donated the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize, which was awarded to especially successful reportages. In 2004 several categories were added to the prize and it was renamed the Henri Nannen Prize. In Germany the prize is considered the highest accolade a journalist can be awarded. Not only is it a memorial to the famous journalist of the early 20th century, Prague-born Egon Erwin Kisch (Der rasende Reporter was the title of his book published in 1924), it is also a memorial to one of Germany’s most important journalists: Henri Nannen, about whom Rudolf Augstein, founder of the Spiegel, wrote: “I don’t know who he was. He was certainly material for Orson Welles.”