What’s Normal After the War

Chapter 10 of Who Was WM? Investigating a Televisionary: The Life and Work of Wolfgang Menge

5 min readJun 16, 2024

This fake photo — created with ChatGPT — shows the Meyer family in their new Hamburg apartment in 1950. Local reporter WM interviews them about the 2,500 days and nights they have spent in temporary shelters since they were bombed out in 1943.

Radio Program to Scribble Down

Merely five months after the end of the war, Northwest German Radio (NWDR) begins broadcasting —operating under British supervision and transmitting from the undestroyed building of the former Reich Station in Hamburg on Rothenbaumchausssee, across from the German News Service. WM will soon be working there and, from the beginning of 1951, also at NWDR.

But how do people find out what’s on the radio and when?

“The radio stations, like the population, want a program guide,” Axel Caesar Springer writes to the British military government in 1946. “The current method of broadcasting the program (BBC-London, for instance, asks its listeners every week to write down the weekly program with pencil and paper) can only be an interim solution …”

The British military government approves Axel Caesar Springer’s application for a license to publish a Radio guide, which he submits together with his father, Hinrich. The first issue of Hörzu! Die Rundfunkzeitung (Listen! The Radio Paper) appears in December 1946, twelve pages thin. Springer recruits the inventor and novelist Eduard Rhein as editor-in-chief. In the 1920s, Rhein was already in charge of a radio magazine at the legendary Berlin publishing house Ullstein. Now, he is developing a successful concept for Hörzu.

The initial print run is 250,000 copies. Rhein will increase this to 4.5 million in the two decades he remains editor-in-chief. Hörzu’s steadily growing revenues will finance the rise of the Springer publishing house, the launch of new newspapers and magazines, the acquisition of others, including Die Welt, and finally, even the takeover of the re-established post-war Ullstein publishing house.

Tokyo-Schulze Discovers WM’s Literary Talent

After only one and a half years, the revenue from the radio guide allows the launch of a daily newspaper.

“You have Hörzu to thank for you being here.”

Publisher Springer bluntly announces this financial fact to the Hamburger Abendblatt’s editorial team in October 1948. To ensure success, he once again brought in an experienced Ullstein veteran as editor-in-chief, 52-year-old Wilhelm Schulze. WM fondly remembers the man who hired him as a local reporter in early 1949.

“He was editor-in-chief even before the Nazis. And he got into trouble with them. In 1934, the Ullsteins sent him to a post that hadn’t existed before—correspondent in Japan. Since then, he has been called ‘Tokyo Schulze.’ He took a liking to me because he thought he had discovered a literary streak in me.”

The talent that Wilhelm Schulze recognizes in his young local reporter demonstrates a report that runs on page 8 of the Hamburger Abendblatt in August 1950. It is entitled “A Completely Normal New House” and describes “seven years of hardship and worries” and how they finally ended. WM researches and writes according to the rules of journalistic craft. But individual authorship shines through, a very personal touch.

A New Life in the New House

“There’s nothing special about this house. No murder, no gas explosion. No movie star lives here, and there is no cabinet minister either. Since the new residents moved in a few weeks ago — after the rebuilding — the baker has been hanging the bread rolls on the door knob every morning at 7 am. Later, the postman rings the doorbell, in between there are peddlers, beggars, salespeople, and — of course — the residents of this house. 42 people. While it has just been stated that there is nothing special about the house, this, of course, does not apply to its 42 residents. The house means a lot to them. It represents a watershed in their life if you want to put it in such a lofty way. An endpoint to seven years of turmoil, worry, and fear.—We have randomly rung at three apartment doors in this house and now want to hear from the people about their in-between-time. About the last seven years or roughly 2500 days and 2500 nights.”

The choice of topic alone demonstrates WM’s interests, empathy, and concern. Measured against the population’s average, journalists earn pretty well in the post-war period. And Springer pays even a little better than most publishers. Nevertheless, the return from London has confronted WM with misery and restrictions unknown in Great Britain. Around 1950, most people in Hamburg still live several to a room. Like WM’s bombed-out parents and his sister Marianne. Apart from the mansions of the Hanseatic upper class — including some newly rich publishers and editors-in-chief — hardly any houses have running hot water or even functioning bathrooms. New construction and the restoration of housing are not progressing fast enough.

Of the three families WM visits because they were lucky enough to move into one of the few restored apartment buildings, he is particularly taken with the Meyers. They were bombed out on July 27, 1943. Operation Gomorrah. Since then, they have lived in two and a half rooms as subtenants and had to share a small kitchen of nine square meters with three other families. Ludwig Meyer, in his early sixties, is an accountant and his wife, Anna, a homemaker and mother of two grown-up children. Their daughter, Anneliese, is 24 years old and a primary school teacher.

Boys Born in 1924—The Lost Cohort

The son Hans-Wilhelm, writes WM, “was born in 1924. That’s the cohort — according to statistics — most severely affected by the last war. Of one hundred boys born that year, 37 are still healthy today. Hans-Wilhelm is not one of these 37. Three days after the Meyers lost their home, he was severely wounded.”

Shot in the head, as we learn; somewhere outside Moscow. Hans-Wilhelm was patched up in a military hospital in Warsaw. It remains unclear how ill he still is. But now, after the Meyers were able to raise 3500 marks towards the building costs, in addition to the rent, they have a home again.

“The tiles above the sinks had to be paid for separately, and the stove pipes were painted with aluminum bronze. For the first eight days in the new apartment, the keyhole was garlanded with fresh flowers every day. — Yes, that’s what those seven years looked like for the Meyers. Seven years of roughly 2,500 days and 2,500 nights. Seven years full of fear, worry, and turmoil.—There’s nothing really extraordinary about these experiences, is there? We’ve all gone through similar ones. Take, for example, the Meyers’ neighbors …”

These are the Rueckerts, as WM’s report continues. But it could also be the Menges, Golditza and Otto with their daughter Marianne. Because both families were bombed out in the same July seven years ago. The only difference is that WM, who, like Hans-Wilhelm Meyer, fought on the Eastern Front and was wounded there, belongs to the more fortunate 37 percent of the lost cohort, boys born in 1924.