Klaus Huhn

Huhn at a book-reading in 2011

Klaus Huhn (24 February 1928 – 20 January 2017) was a German sports journalist, writer and sports administrator.[1] Huhn worked for the East German mass-market daily newspaper, Neues Deutschland, and was chairman of the Sports Journalists Sub-Association within that country's important Union of Journalists.

As a writer he concentrated on the great names from the sporting history of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and wrote, more recently, largely for the "GDR nostalgia" readership.[2]

He published several books about the cycling legend Gustav-Adolf Schur, and was employed as the ghostwriter for Schur's autobiography.[3] The book's objectivity was questioned by one reviewer who described it as "shameless propaganda".[3]

Life

Huhn was born into a Communist family, in Berlin, where his father was a clerical worker. Huhn attended secondary school in Berlin and in Saalfeld.[1]

In 1946 he joined the Deutsche Volkszeitung, the central organ of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the Soviet occupation zone.[4] In 1954 he took a correspondence course in journalism at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig and in 1983 he was at the German College of Physical Culture, also in Leipzig, with a doctorate in pedagogy.

He died at the age of 88 on 20 January 2017.[5]

Books

• 2016 Exkursion durch volkseigene Ruinen: Vom Verschwinden einer ganzen Volkswirtschaft, ("Excursion Through Nationalized Ruins: the Disappearance of an Entire Economy"), Edition Berolina, ISBN 978-3958-4106-57[6]

References

1. Klaus Gallinat. "Ullrich, Klaus (eigtl.: Klaus Huhn) * 24.2.1928 Sportjournalist" (in German). Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur: Biographische Datenbanken. Retrieved 15 July 2015.
2. Journalist Klaus Huhn war Stasi-Spitzel. Archived 2015-09-24 at the Wayback Machine In: Focus Magazin. Nr. 45 (1995), 6. November 1995.
3. Reinsch, Michael (20 March 2001). "Held der Beinarbeit ..... Heilige Sattelzeiten: Gustav-Adolf Schur radelt in seiner Autobiographie über Hölzchen und Stöckchen". Faz.net. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (online). Retrieved 15 July 2015.
4. Benning, Kristen (1997), Die Geschichte des SED-Zentralorgans Neues Deutschland von 1946 bis 1949. Die Waffenlieferanten "im Kampfe gegen die Reaktion und ihre Verwirrungsmanöver" [The history of SED's official journal Neues Deutschland from 1946 to 1949: Arms suppliers "in the struggle against reactionaries and their strategies of distraction"] (in German), Münster: LIT Verlag
5. Wolfgang Hübner: Eine große Nummer, Nachruf in Neues Deutschland, 21 Januar 2017
6. Huhn, Klaus. Exkursion durch volkseigene Ruinen: Vom Verschwinden einer ganzen Volkswirtschaft. edition berolina. ASIN 3958410650.

Further reading

• Friedrichs, Hanns Joachim (1994), Journalists Lives, Munich, pp. 149 et seq.
• Huhn, Klaus (2011), Auch dem Papst half ich mal aus der Klemme. Episoden eines bewegten Lebens, Berlin: Edition Ost ISBN 978-3-360-01822-9.
• Michael Meyen, Anke Fiedler (ed.) (2010), Die Grenze im Kopf. Journalisten in der DDR, Panama Verlag, ISBN 978-3-938714-16-4.