History

The Hans Bredow Institute was founded on 30 May 1950 by the then NWDR (Northwest German Broadcasting) and the University of Hamburg as a foundation legally responsible under civil law. The Institute was named after Hans Bredow, who had signally promoted the establishment of German broadcasting as State Secretary and Commissioner for Broadcasting in the Ministry of Posts in the Weimar Republic. After a work-ban at the time of National Socialism, Hans Bredow worked on establishing public broadcasting post war in close contact with the Chief controller of the NWDR, Sir Hugh Greene.

The purpose of the Hans Bredow Institute as an independent, publically-accountable foundation is to conduct research into media, particularly in the areas of broadcasting, as well as of other electronic media, in an interdisciplinary fashion and to make the results available to scholarship, praxis and the public.

The interdisciplinary structure of the Institute’s research into media finds expression in the specialist orientation of its respective directors: from 1950-1967 a historian, in the person of Egmont Zechlin, was head of the Institute, from 1968-1970 an educationalist, in the person of Hans Wenke, from 1971-1979 a sociologist, in the person of Janpeter Kob. From 1979-1995, the Institute was led by academic lawyer Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem, from 1995-1998 by the political scientist and scholar of journalism and communication, Otfried Jarren. Since the summer of 1998 the academic leadership of the Institute has resided in a directorate, which represents the two main pillars of the Institute’s work, research into media law and communications. Initially, Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem (until December, 1999), Otfried Jarren (until July, 2001) and the communications scholar Uwe Hasebrink belonged to it. Since July 2001, the directorate has consisted of Uwe Hasebrink (Chair) and the academic lawyer, Wolfgang Schulz.