Ulm, Fritz Otto

Journalist, publisher

Born: 14.02.1900 in Magdeburg

died: 07.12.1967 in Wiesbaden

Ulm completed a business apprenticeship, joined the SPD and worked as a journalist for the "Vorwärts" and a number of other social democratic papers, including the "Berliner Tagblatt".

As a so-called half-Jew, Ulm joined the "Reich Association of Non-Aryan Christians" (renamed the Paulus Bund in 1936) in 1934. Christians who were considered Jews or half-Jews according to National Socialist racial ideology, despite being baptized, were excluded from the organization. Ulm was also a member of a committee that tried to protect Jewish victims from persecution. During the "Third Reich", he and his wife Annemarie changed residence several times to avoid arrest.

Immediately after the end of the war, Ulm first published a newspaper in Salzwedel under British occupation, then worked for the American military administration in Wiesbaden. Alongside Georg Alfred Mayer, he was given the license for the Wiesbadener Kurier (WK), which first appeared on 2 October 1945. From then until 1962, Ulm was the dominant patriarch of the WK, present in the public life of the city and a recognized political commentator with extraordinary analytical and linguistic skills. Ulm was a thoroughbred journalist who demanded a lot from himself, but also from his staff. His marginal notes on the galley proofs were universally feared. He was considered to be "mad about newspapers", which he saw as self-deprecating, marking his glosses with the abbreviations "fou" or "mad".

The Prime Minister of Hesse awarded him the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his services to the reconstruction of a liberal newspaper system. Ulm wore it with pride; it also adorns the stone of his grave of honor in the southern cemetery.