12th March 2007
In last week's posting I wrote about John Seymour Chaloner, who died recently (on February 9th 2007) and, in the words of his obituary in The Times, was "best known for founding Der Spiegel (the German news magazine) after the war."
Intrigued by this story, I have discovered more about an equally remarkable man, Harry Bohrer, who was a junior officer - a staff sergeant - in the British Army Information Unit in Hannover, for which Major John Chaloner was Press Chief.
Harry Bohrer was born in 1916, as Hanus Bohrer, and grew up in Prague, in a Jewish family who spoke both Czech and German. In 1939, shortly before Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, he fled to Great Britain. His brother escaped to Israel, but his sister and parents stayed behind in Czechoslovakia and died in the concentration camps. In Britain he worked as a forester for two years and then joined the army, where he was assigned to an information unit because of his knowledge of German, which he spoke faultlessly.
In March 1946, Chaloner and his secretary and interpreter, Hildegard Neef, had pasted up a dummy of a new magazine they wished to create. Chaloner showed the dummy to Bohrer in May 1946 and despite his not having any previous experience of journalism, gave him the job of publisher and editor-in-chief (though it was never called that) and responsibility for recruiting the German staff.
From June to December 1946, Bohrer recruited, trained, encouraged and generally cared for his young editors, and taught them how to produce a magazine which, in his words:
"... we wanted to be lively and say much in a few words; that would report the news rather than comment. We wanted to show pictures of real people, not official portraits. And above all, we wanted to write about people, not to show that a nobleman and rural labourer look much the same in their underpants, but because people have desires, ambitions and weaknesses which are just as important for the history of the world as their philosophy and attitudes."
A magazine like this, modelled on the US news magazine 'Time' and a similar but short-lived British publication 'News Review', had never appeared in Germany before. Bohrer knew that to create "the lively narrative style of a news magazine is actually more difficult than the traditional solemnity of German leading articles, comment columns and features.?"
Leo Brawand, the first economics editor of Der Spiegel, who was one of those recruited by Bohrer, dedicated his book 'Der Spiegel Story' (which most of this posting is based on), to him. The second chapter in the book is titled 'Harry Bohrer - der Gentleman aus Prag' and starts with a quote from Rudolf Augstein the future editor and owner of the magazine: "Bohrer habe ich nicht nur gemocht, sondern beinahe geliebt." (I didn't only like him, I nearly loved him).
In the 'Spiegel Story' Leo Brawand tells how Harry Bohrer, the German speaking Jewish exile from Prague, now a sergeant in the British army, and the young German editors, some of whom, like Brawand and Augstein had fought in the German army, now shared a common outlook after the end of the war:
"In charge of instructing editorial staff, Harry Bohrer did not need to tell his young men what course to steer. The crimes of the Nazis and the collapse of the country had brought into being a curious Anglo-German united front against war, military authority, and capitalist exploitation. (It was a united front hitherto unknown among the Germans, and it gradually disintegrated afterwards)."
Brawand goes on to quote Rudolf Augstein writing 15 years later "As young witnesses of bloody annihilation, we united under the unspoken guiding principle of 'dies nicht wieder' (never again)."
The first issue of the magazine, then called 'Diese Woche' (This Week) was dated 16th November. However the senior British authorities did not approve of it. In Bohrer's words: "We began without the proverbial blessing from on high. A suspicious watch was kept on us, and those who had power to say whether or not we could go ahead with our project said no." Chaloner was reproved for 'exceeding his responsibilities' and the decision taken to transfer it to German control. To quote Bohrer again:
"The magazine [Diese Woche] appeared under the auspices of the military government. That made it almost an official organ. It was too disrespectful, independent and reckless for the purpose. Awkward questions might have been asked in the House of Commons about a paper working with official funds, published in the name of the government, etc. When every line had been scrutinised by the [British] censor in Berlin for two weeks running, orders came that we were to get rid of the new magazine by handing it over to the Germans."
The first issue of the new magazine, now called by its new name, Der Spiegel, and under independent German control, appeared in January 1947.
In time, the transfer was to make Rudolf Augstein a millionaire. Harry Bohrer, on the other hand, returned to Britain in August 1947. John Chaloner gave him a job as editor of the West London Chronicle and in 1950 he moved to the trade magazine, The Grocer, where he worked for 10 years.
In 1962, during the 'Spiegel-Affair' when Der Spiegel published an article critical of the German government, and of the Defence Minister Franz Josef Strauss in particular, police invaded Der Spiegel's offices, arrested Augstein and compelled the magazine to cease publication for a week, before popular protest forced the government to back down. John Chaloner and Harry Bohrer flew over to Germany to defend the publication, and stand by their editors. In numerous interviews Chaloner explained why they had founded the magazine in the first place: so that Germans would rediscover the meaning, the power and the role of a free press, and that this was essential to a successful functioning democracy.
When Harry Bohrer died in 1985, Rudolf Augstein gave a speech at his service of remembrance, and told how he received the licence to publish the magazine, from the British authorities:
"Harry, although not a journalist, was journalistically nevertheless the motor and I, with as little journalistic experience as he, put his ideas into practice.
"When because of complaints by all four Allied Powers, the magazine had to be handed over to the Germans within twenty-four hours - the alternative would have been to close it down - Harry came with me to the Colonel in charge who, by the way, had spent most of his time in India.
"Staff Sergeant Harry had to wait outside while I received the document. When I came out of the room Harry read it over and said: 'It says here that they are allowed to censor you. Go back inside and have that changed.'
"I told him, 'I don't know any English' and he replied, 'then you must tell him with your hands and feet.'
"I went back to the Colonel, put a pen in his hand and guided it to cross out the passage about censorship, That's how Der Spiegel was founded."
(This posting is based on the book 'Der Spiegel Story', by Leo Brawand, published in 1987 by ECON Verlag GmbH. An edited and somewhat shorter English version was published in 1989 by Pergamom Press plc. An updated version, which I haven't read, with the title Der Spiegel: Ein Besatzungskind, was published in 2007).