Klaus Huhn

Klaus Huhn (24 February 1928 – 20 January 2017) was a German sports journalist, writer and sports administrator.^[1] Huhn worked for the East German mass-market daily newspaper, Neues Deutschland, and was chairman of the Sports Journalists Sub-Association within that country's important Union of Journalists.

Huhn at a book-reading in 2011

As a writer he concentrated on the great names from the sporting history of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and wrote, more recently, largely for the "GDR nostalgia" readership.^[2]

He published several books about the cycling legend Gustav-Adolf Schur, and was employed as the ghostwriter for Schur's autobiography.^[3] The book's objectivity was questioned by one reviewer who described it as "shameless propaganda".^[3]

Life

Huhn was born into a Communist family, in Berlin, where his father was a clerical worker. Huhn attended secondary school in Berlin and in Saalfeld.^[1]

In 1946 he joined the Deutsche Volkszeitung, the central organ of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the Soviet occupation zone.^[4] In 1954 he took a correspondence course in journalism at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig and in 1983 he was at the German College of Physical Culture, also in Leipzig, with a doctorate in pedagogy.

He died at the age of 88 on 20 January 2017.^[5]

Books

• 2016 Exkursion durch volkseigene Ruinen: Vom Verschwinden einer ganzen Volkswirtschaft, ("Excursion Through Nationalized Ruins: the Disappearance of an Entire Economy"), Edition Berolina, ISBN 978-3958-4106-57^[6]