Homage to a Legend

He was a journalistic doyen and a legend while he was alive. Someone who filled rooms and even commanded respect from his worst enemies. DER SPIEGEL-publisher Rudolf Augstein called him a „main actor who was able to play all supporting roles”, others regarded the founder of the stern magazine to be the “Hans Albers of German journalism”, a man who feared neither God nor advertising clients. In his own editorial office, it wasn’t just a few who “could murdered him to then cry at his grave", as one of his most loyal editors once sighed.

Henri Nannen, son of a policeman from Emden, who seemed to radiate a victorious glow liked to refer to himself as “The Court of the German Empire for the man on the street”. The key to your fellow man is more important than the key to the universe, was this magazine maker’s credo who wrote an unprecedented success story with his magazine.

Nannen’s grab bag only contained what the master personally liked – and his curiosity was sheer inexhaustible. His columns titled “Dear stern-Reader” captured the spirit of the times. Sir Henri turned the stern into a political battleship; he traveled to Leonid Breschnew in Moskau and influenced Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik, fathered “Jugend Forscht” – a nationally renowned science competition for youths, created the Egon Erwin Kisch Award and founded a journalist school.

And as he thought “it isn’t enough to be pushing up daisies someday and not have moved anything other than having produced a pleasant little magazine”, he moved back to Emden and donated his art collection and an own museum to his hometown.