Author of “German for Professionals”
Language critic Wolf Schneider has died
11/11/2022 10:52 am
Journalist and “language pope” Wolf Schneider has trained many journalists, but is also known to a wider audience as the author of books such as “Deutsch für Profis”. He started his career without any training. He was 97 years old.
Journalist and language critic Wolf Schneider has died. He died this Friday at the age of 97 in Starnberg, as announced by his family.
Schneider, born in Erfurt in 1925, among other things directed the Henri Nannen School of Journalism in Hamburg and held management positions in well-known German media companies. With his books such as “German for Professionals” he became known throughout Germany as an expert on language and style. Schneider was a critic of spelling reform.
He began his journalistic career as a translator for the US military government’s Neue Zeitung in Munich after World War II. He became an editor there without studying and without an internship. He later moved to the AP news agency, then to Süddeutsche Zeitung. There he was head of the news department, frequent author of the “Striplight” column, then Washington correspondent.
Stern founder Henri Nannen brought him to Hamburg in 1966. Schneider first became acting manager, then publishing manager, before moving to Springer in 1971. In 1973, Schneider became editor-in-chief of the daily ” Die Welt” for about a year.
About five years later he took over the direction of the Hamburg School of Journalism, today’s Henri Nannen School. He held this position until 1995, after which he became increasingly known as a language critic. Schneider also took on further teaching assignments at universities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In later years he wrote as a columnist for “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” and “Handelsblatt”.