Wolf Schneider

Schneider was born on 7 May 1925 in Erfurt[2] and grew up in Berlin.[3] Having passed his Abitur, he served with the Luftwaffe until the end of the Second World War. His post-war career began as a translator for the US Army, and in 1947 he joined the Munich-based Neue Zeitung, a newspaper run by the US military government.[4] It was here that he received journalistic training and later worked as an editor. In the early 1950s Schneider was a correspondent for the news agency AP; in later years he was in charge of the news team and correspondent in Washington for the Süddeutsche Zeitung.[5]

In 1966, Schneider joined Stern magazine, where he worked as editor-in-chief, and from 1969 as manager of the publishing house.[5] German media tycoon Axel Springer hired Schneider in 1971 to design the news magazine Dialog, aimed at challenging Der Spiegel's dominant position in the German market.[6] The project ended in failure,[6] however, and Schneider was appointed editor-in-chief of Springer's conservative daily Die Welt, based in Hamburg.[4] Springer dismissed Schneider after only one year.[7]

Schneider remained at Springer as editor-in-chief without portfolio. In 1979, he was appointed the inaugural director of the newly founded Hamburger Journalistenschule, which later became known as Henri-Nannen-Schule.[4] He was to hold this position until 1995.[8] He taught hundreds of students,[9] many of whom are now in prominent positions. He also became widely known during this time as the godfather of concise German prose.[10][11]

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Schneider also presented the NDR Talk Show.[4]

Schneider was married and a father of three children.[12][13][14][15] He lived in Starnberg, where he died on 11 November 2022 at the age of 97.[4][11][16]

From 1995, Schneider was a vigorous lecturer on the German language, and gave seminars for press officers and young journalists.[17] He was a prolific writer and produced 28 best-selling nonfiction books,[18] among them staple works on proper German style (e.g. "German for life. What school forgot to teach").[19] His last works were "Speak German", a defence of the German language in the face of anglicisms,[20] and Man: a Career, which tells the story of mankind's rise to mastery of the earth, and plots our uncertain future.[21]

Schneider's ideal was a concise written style, avoiding the typically-German pitfalls of rambling sentences, separated verbs, and complex constructions. Schneider was a critic of the German orthography reform[4] and founded with others the pressure group Aktion Lebendiges Deutsch (Living German).[22] Schneider opposed gender neutrality in the German language.[23]

Schneider received several prizes,[24] including the Henri Nannen Prize for his life's work,[3][25][26] and the media prize for language culture (Medienpreis für Sprachkultur) of the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache.[3] He held a chair as honorary professor at the University of Salzburg.[27]

• "Pressemitteilung: Bundespräsident Steinmeier kondoliert zum Tod von Wolf Schneider". Der Bundespräsident (in German). Retrieved 13 November 2022.
• Schnibben, Cordt. "Unsterblich". Die Zeit (in German). Retrieved 13 November 2022.
• Esslinger, Detlef (11 November 2022). "Nachruf auf Wolf Schneider: Der Mann, der seine Adresse redigierte". Süddeutsche.de (in German). Retrieved 13 November 2022.

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