Franz Burda (24 February 1903 – 30 September 1986) was a German

publisher Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

. He inherited his father's publishing business, which he developed into what is now the

Hubert Burda Media Hubert Burda Media Holding is a German media group with headquarters in Offenburg. It originated as a small printing business, founded by Franz Burda Snr in Philippsburg, in 1903. In 1986, the corporate group was divided up between Franz Jnr, ...

conglomerate.

Early life and family

Burda was born in

Philippsburg Philippsburg () is a town in the district of Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. History Before 1623, Philippsburg was known as "Udenheim". The city was a possession of the Bishop of Speyer from 1316 to 1803. The town is named after P ...

. He received his doctorate in 1927, at the

University of Erlangen A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Univ ...

with an economic history of the development work of the Baden-products markets. He married fashion publisher

Aenne Burda Aenne Burda (28 July 1909 – 3 November 2005), born Anna Magdalene Lemminger, was a German publisher of the Hubert Burda Media, Burda Group, a media group based in Offenburg and Munich, Germany. She was one of the symbols of the Wirtschaftswund ...

ne Lemminger on 9 July 1931 and was the father of three sons, Franz, the art collector Frieder, and

Hubert Hubert is a Germanic masculine given name, from ''hug'' "mind" and '' beraht'' "bright". It also occurs as a surname. Saint Hubert of Liège (or Hubertus) (c. 656 – 30 May 727) is the patron saint of hunters, mathematicians, opticians, and m ...

, the heir to the publishing empire.

Business during World War II

From 1934 to 1937, Burda was a member of the paramilitary

National Socialist Motor Corps The National Socialist Motor Corps (, NSKK) was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) that officially existed from May 1931 to 1945. The group was a successor organisation to the older National Socialist Automobile Corps (, NS ...

. His biographer has characterised his involvement with Nazism as essentially commercial and pragmatic, rather than ideological. In 1933 he stated publicly that his business did not have any Jewish employees or co-owners, although he would have privately known that statement to be untrue, having intervened on behalf of the Jewish wife of one of his employees. He developed his family's small printing business into a large media conglomerate. He benefited from "

Aryanization Aryanization () was the Nazi term for the seizure of property from Jews and its transfer to non-Jews, and the forced expulsion of Jews from economic life in Nazi Germany, Axis powers, Axis-aligned states, and their occupied territories. It enta ...

" of Jewish property by the Nazi government when in 1938 Burda and partners acquired ''Großdruckerei, Papiergroßhandlung und Papierwarenwerk Akademiestraße Gebrüder Bauer'' in

Mannheim Mannheim (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: or ), officially the University City of Mannheim (), is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, second-largest city in Baden-Württemberg after Stuttgart, the States of Ger ...

. Its owner Berthold Reiss and fellow shareholders were Jews, and so they were forced to sell the business under Nazi "Aryanization" laws. After the acquisition, Burda invited Reiss to stay on at the company to help manage the transition. Reiss’s son Hans would later write that the pair established a good working relationship, despite the circumstances of the acquisition. Burda interjected on Reiss' behalf when the latter was interned as part of

Kristallnacht ( ) or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilia ...

. The Burda and Reiss families developed a friendship after 1945. Burda avoided military service himself by obtaining a contract printing maps for the military and using his connections. His antisemitic views were also alleged in the 1950s.

Postwar era

After 1945, Burda was allowed to publish again. For the French occupation authorities, he printed stamps and school books. In 1948, against the will of many French officers, he managed to bring on the market the magazine ''Das Ufer'' ('The shore' or 'The river bank'), the forerunner of the popular magazine later called ''

Bunte ''Bunte'' (company's preferred spelling in capital letters) is a German-language weekly celebrity gossip magazine published by Hubert Burda Media. The first edition was published in 1948 under the name ''Das Ufer''. Under the leadership of Hub ...

''. It helped him that he was friends with a particular officer, Raymond Schmittlein, the press chief of the zone, who arranged for the license to be issued in the name of a female friend of Schmittlein's – a 'straw woman,' as it were.Peter Köpf (22 February 2003).
Der herrliche Franz
'.

die tageszeitung ''Die Tageszeitung'' (, "The Daily Newspaper"), stylized as ''die tageszeitung'' and commonly referred to as ''taz'', is a German daily newspaper. It is run as a cooperative – it is administered by its employees and a co-operative of sharehol ...

. Retrieved 10 June 2010. Burda died in

Offenburg Offenburg (; "open borough" - coat of arms showing open gates; Low Alemmanic: ''Offäburg'') is a city in the state of Baden-Württemberg, in south-western Germany. With nearly 60,000 inhabitants (2019), it is the largest city and the administrat ...

at the age of 83 after relinquishing control of Hubert Burda Media to his three sons.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Burda, Franz 1903 births 1986 deaths German magazine founders 20th-century German publishers (people) Franz Grand Crosses with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Recipients of the Order of Merit of Baden-Württemberg Nazi Party members National Socialist Motor Corps members