Ewald Schmidt Di Simoni

Personal

Vocation

Notable

German publisher, journalist and author, who co-founded Die Zeit in 1946 with Gerd Bucerius (covering regulatory and legal issues), Lovis H. Lorenz (as another columnist) and Richard Tüngel (as editor). All of them soon acquired the much more marketable magazine Stern in Hanover. Due to internal arguments, Schmidt di Simoni and Tüngel (Lorenz had previously retired) later separated from Bucerius, who then restructured the entire publishing house. Today Die Zeit is the most widely read German weekly newspaper. After serving in World War I as a volunteer and officer cadet in the Navy of the German Empire, he joined the publishing industry. He worked at the Ullstein publishing house as sales manager in Berlin, then moved to the Frankfurter Zeitung as main sales manager. After the Nazi seized power in 1933, he moved in 1934 to the Kölnische Zeitung. Schmidt di Simoni was approached for promotion by the Nazis but he wanted nothing to do with them. This led to his expulsion from the Nazi press chamber. He thus moved to Dusseldorf, where he worked from 1937 to 1938 as a newspaper wholesaler. Further banned by the Nazis, he then founded a textile distribution company in Chemnitz, selling commercial goods to hundreds of customers in Germany as Director General. Ewald Schmidt di Simoni was drafted in 1939 into the Kriegsmarine. Through his organizational talent, he became Corvette Captain, then worked in the Admiralty. Ewald Schmidt di Simoni died on 2 September 1980, aged 82. Link to Wikipedia biography (German)