Konkret
Encyclopedia
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
magazines.
konkret was originally the name of a magazine established by Klaus Rainer Röhl
Klaus Rainer Röhl
Klaus Rainer Röhl is a pre-eminent German journalist and author, best known as founder, owner, publisher and editor-in-chief of konkret, the most influential magazine on the German political left from the 1960s to the early 1970s...
in 1957, that was an influential magazine on the German political left in the 1960s. The magazine was dissolved in 1973 as a consequence of Röhl's rejection of the leftist terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
in Germany (in which his former wife Ulrike Meinhof
Ulrike Meinhof
Ulrike Marie Meinhof was a German left-wing militant. She co-founded the Red Army Faction in 1970 after having previously worked as a journalist for the monthly left-wing magazine Konkret. She was arrested in 1972, and eventually charged with numerous murders and the formation of a criminal...
took active part).
Since 1974, Hermann L. Gremliza
Hermann L. Gremliza
Hermann Ludwig Gremliza is a German left wing journalist.In the sixties he studied at Tübingen. He learned the profession working at Der Spiegel and after 1974 has published the magazine konkret....
has published a monthly magazine with the same name, self-described as a "magazine for politics and culture". The current magazine is significantly less influential than the original konkret magazine and part of the far-left fringe. It is described as leftist extremist
Far left
Far left, also known as the revolutionary left, radical left and extreme left are terms which refer to the highest degree of leftist positions among left-wing politics...
by the Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution and also as Anti-German by the State Office for Protection of the Constitution in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Studentenkurier
In 1955, Klaus Rainer RöhlKlaus Rainer Röhl
Klaus Rainer Röhl is a pre-eminent German journalist and author, best known as founder, owner, publisher and editor-in-chief of konkret, the most influential magazine on the German political left from the 1960s to the early 1970s...
started the monthly Studentenkurier ("Student Messenger"), which was published until 1957. Due to the contributions of many authors as Werner Riegel, Peter Rühmkorf
Peter Rühmkorf
Peter Rühmkorf was a German writer who significantly influenced German post-war literature....
, Arno Schmidt
Arno Schmidt
Arno Schmidt was a German author and translator.-Biography:Born in Hamburg, son of a police constable, Schmidt moved with his widowed mother to Lauban and attended the secondary school in Görlitz. He then worked as a clerk in a textile company in Greiffenberg...
, Kurt Hiller
Kurt Hiller
Kurt Hiller also known as Keith Lurr and Klirr was a German essayist of high stylistic originality and a political journalist from a Jewish family. A socialist, he was deeply influenced by Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer, despising the philosophy of G. W. F...
, it became a very influential magazine among students.
konkret
On the basis of the success of the Studentenkurier, Konkret was founded by Röhl in 1957. Until 1964, it had clandestine ideological and financial relations with the East German government. Innovative in its style, beautifully illustrated and printed on huge folio size heavy stock, its pages often ended up as posters on students' dorm walls and university campus fences. It had great influence on progressive intellectuals, both students and adults. In the high phase of the German student movementGerman student movement
The German student movement was a protest movement that took place during the late 1960s in West Germany. It was largely a reaction against the perceived authoritarianism and hypocrisy of the German government and other Western governments, and the poor living conditions of students...
of the sixties, it appeared biweekly and sometimes even weekly.
One of the best known journalists on the magazine was Ulrike Meinhof
Ulrike Meinhof
Ulrike Marie Meinhof was a German left-wing militant. She co-founded the Red Army Faction in 1970 after having previously worked as a journalist for the monthly left-wing magazine Konkret. She was arrested in 1972, and eventually charged with numerous murders and the formation of a criminal...
, the editor-in-chief from 1962. She ended her work for konkret early in 1969 shortly before she joined the Red Army Faction
Red Army Faction
The radicalized were, like many in the New Left, influenced by:* Sociological developments, pressure within the educational system in and outside Europe and the U.S...
. On May 7, 1969, the house of Konkret publisher Klaus Rainer Röhl
Klaus Rainer Röhl
Klaus Rainer Röhl is a pre-eminent German journalist and author, best known as founder, owner, publisher and editor-in-chief of konkret, the most influential magazine on the German political left from the 1960s to the early 1970s...
was stormed by activists including konkret staff under Meinhof's leadership, its windows and furnishing destroyed. The Red Army Faction also kidnapped Röhl's daughters in 1970; they were rescued from Sicilia by Stefan Aust
Stefan Aust
Stefan Aust is a German journalist and was the editor-in-chief of the weekly news magazine Der Spiegel from 1994 to February 2008...
.
After a long conflict over the political orientation of konkret, particularly over the use of violence which Röhl strongly rejected, Röhl left the magazine in 1973, and shortly after, the magazine was dissolved.
Hermann L. Gremliza's konkret since 1974
In 1974, Hermann L. GremlizaHermann L. Gremliza
Hermann Ludwig Gremliza is a German left wing journalist.In the sixties he studied at Tübingen. He learned the profession working at Der Spiegel and after 1974 has published the magazine konkret....
founded a magazine called konkret. He writes the introduction column of the magazine and its current location of publication is Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
.
Konkret presents itself as a radical leftist magazine, standing to left of Germany's established parties. Currently, it is often connected to the Anti-German movement, although this attribution has been rejected by Gremliza. Its maxim is "reading what others don't want to know" (lesen, was andere nicht wissen wollen).
Notable contributors during the Gremliza era (among numerous others) were: Norbert Blüm
Norbert Blüm
Norbert Blüm is a German federal legislator from North Rhine-Westphalia, Chairman of the CDU there , and former minister for labor and social affairs ....
, Wolf Biermann
Wolf Biermann
Karl Wolf Biermann is a German singer-songwriter and former East German dissident.-Early life:Biermann's father, who worked on the Hamburg docks, was a German Jew and a member of the German Resistance....
, Heinrich Böll
Heinrich Böll
Heinrich Theodor Böll was one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers. Böll was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in 1967 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972.- Biography :...
, Daniel Cohn-Bendit
Daniel Cohn-Bendit
Daniel Marc Cohn-Bendit is a Franco-German politician, active in both countries. He was a student leader during the unrest of May 1968 in France and he was also known during that time as Dany le Rouge...
, Karlheinz Deschner
Karlheinz Deschner
Karl Heinrich Leopold Deschner , is a German researcher and writer who has achieved public attention in Europe for his thorough and fiercely critical treatment of Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular, as expressed in several articles and books, culminating in his opus The...
, Jutta Ditfurth, Rudi Dutschke
Rudi Dutschke
Alfred Willi Rudi Dutschke was the most prominent spokesperson of the German student movement of the 1960s. He advocated 'a long march through the institutions' of power to create radical change from within government and society by becoming an integral part of the machinery...
, Thomas Ebermann, Erich Fried
Erich Fried
Erich Fried , an Austrian poet who settled in England, was known for his political-minded poetry. He was also a broadcaster, translator and essayist....
, Robert Gernhardt
Robert Gernhardt
Robert Gernhardt was a German writer, painter, caricaturist and poet.-Life:Robert Gernhardt studied Painting and German in Stuttgart and Berlin. He was one of the regular contributors to the satirical magazine Pardon, where he did the section Welt im Spiegel together with F. K. Waechter and F. W...
, Sebastian Haffner
Sebastian Haffner
Sebastian Haffner was a German journalist and author. He wrote mainly about recent German history....
, Yaak Karsunke
Yaak Karsunke
Yaak Karsunke is a German author and actor.The son of an engineer and the procurer of a publishing house, he grew up in the borough of Pankow. In 1949 his family moved to Friedenau. Here Karsunke attended Gymnasium . In 1953 he passed the Abitur and studied jurisprudence for three semesters...
, Oskar Negt
Oskar Negt
Oskar Negt is a philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory. He is Professor of Sociology at the Universität Hannover....
, Robert Neumann, Willy Puchner
Willy Puchner
Willy Puchner is an Austrian photographer, artist, painter and author..- Life :Puchner was born and grew up in Mistelbach an der Zaya, Lower Austria, where his parents owned a photo studio...
, Alice Schwarzer
Alice Schwarzer
Alice Schwarzer is the most prominent contemporary German feminist. She is founder and publisher of the German feminist journal EMMA.-Biography and positions:...
Klaus Theweleit
Klaus Theweleit
Klaus Theweleit is a German sociologist and writer.-Life:Theweleit was born in East Prussia, the son of a railway company worker. He wrote the following about his father: "Above all he was a railroader, wholeheartedly, as he used to say, and then a human being. He was a rather good human being and...
, Sahra Wagenknecht
Sahra Wagenknecht
Sahra Wagenknecht is a German politician. She is a Member of the Bundestag, author, and a member of the National Committee of the Left Party. Since May 2010 she is deputy chairperson of Die Linke.- Early life :...
, Günter Wallraff
Günter Wallraff
Günter Wallraff is a famous German writer and undercover journalist.-Research methods:Wallraff came to prominence thanks to his striking journalistic research methods and several major books on lower class working conditions and tabloid journalism...
, Detlef zum Winkel, Gero Hoschek, Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Hans Magnus Enzensberger , is a German author, poet, translator, and editor. He has also written under the pseudonym Andreas Thalmayr. He lives in Munich.- Life :...
, Günter Grass
Günter Grass
Günter Wilhelm Grass is a Nobel Prize-winning German author, poet, playwright, sculptor and artist.He was born in the Free City of Danzig...