Recommendations of the Editorial team
For 25 years you read “Wagner’s Post” on the second page of “Bild”. It was aimed at politicians and actors, athletes and polar bears, at the weather and the elements, at firefighters and garbage collectors. Franz Josef Wagner didn’t just write subjectively – he was the subjective. His opinions were mostly surprising. And he always had one.
Wagner was born in what was then the Czech Republic, grew up in Regensburg and volunteered at the “Nürnberger Nachrichten”. He then worked for “Bild” in Munich. In the 1990s he ran “Bunte” – it was the magazine’s best time. He then became editor-in-chief of the “BZ” and “BZ am Sonntag”. Not everyone reported on was happy with his writing. Wagner also developed the German edition of “Elle” and “Super-Illu” – and eventually became a columnist for “Bild”.
“I like to write on a razor blade.”
After the first espresso of the day, he wrote his column in his comfortable old apartment. At lunchtime he was seen eating alone at a table in a celebrity restaurant on Schlüterstrasse. Franz Josef Wagner was convinced that people tell themselves fairy tales in order to live. “I like to write on a razor blade.”
Now Franz Josef Wagner, the eminence of tabloid journalism, has died in Berlin at the age of 82.