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Hans Zehrer’s Intellectual Journey from Weimar Berlin to Postwar Hamburg

This chapter provides a fresh analysis of Hans Zehrer (1899–1966), examining his journalism and politics at the end of the Weimar Republic. Ousted after the Nazi seizure of power, he “emigrated internally” to Sylt. He left the island after 1945, first as the editor in chief of Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt, founded by Bishop Hanns Lilje in Hanover, and later of Die Welt in Hamburg. The chapter traces the evolution of his thoughts from his wartime book Der Mensch in dieser Zeit, through his Stille vor dem Sturm. Zehrer showed that he was not a liberal or a social democrat but a conservative who wrestled with how battered West Germany might become a new society based on firm constitutional principles and Christian morality. Moreover, Stille vor dem Sturm indicates that, if nothing else, Zehrer's notions of politics and society went through a phase that reflected a learning process and a willingness to change. It was only in the mid-1960s that he became more resigned and fatalistic, partly in response to the weakening of his influence within Axel Springer's media empire.