Gerd Bucerius

Who was Gerd Bucerius?

Gerd Bucerius was a German politician and journalist, one of the founding members of Die Zeit. He is the namesake of the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg and of the Bucerius Kunst Forum, an art gallery.

Bucerius was born in Westphalia, and studied law in Freiburg, Berlin, and Hamburg. Upon completion of his university studies, he was named a judge in Kiel. With the rise to power of the Nazis in 1933, his wife, a Jew, took refuge in the United Kingdom. Bucerius for his part became a lawyer, defending numerous Jewish clients.

With the Allied victory in World War II, Bucerius became a politician and journalist. The British tasked him with the reorganization of the senate in Hamburg; in 1949 he was elected as a deputy to the first post-war Bundestag. A member of the CDU, he retained his seat until 1962. In 1946, with Lovis H. Lorenz, Richard Tüngel, and Ewald Schmidt di Simoni he created Die Zeit, with which they hoped to found a great newspaper for the north of Germany. Even though the emblem of Bremen was placed on its cover by way of a logo, the newspaper's city of origin was Hamburg.