Henry Grunwald (time)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Henry Anatole Grunwald (December 3, 1922 - February 26, 2005) was an Austrian-born journalist and diplomat perhaps best known for his position as managing editor of TIME magazine and editor in chief of Time, Inc.

Grunwald was born Heinz Anatol Grünwald in Vienna. His father, Alfred Grünwald, wrote libretti for operettas by Lehár, Kálmán and Oscar Straus. His mother was Mila Löwenstein. However, in 1938, after the Anschluss, the family left Austria, first for Czechoslovakia, then Paris, and eventually, in 1940, after brief periods in Biarritz, Casablanca, and Lisbon, for the United States. Grunwald had ambitions to be a playwright, but got a job as a copy boy at TIME while studying at New York University.

Grunwald worked his way up at TIME magazine until his retirement in 1987. He began to give TIME writers bylines, a practice which had not been allowed previously. He also introduced new departments such as Behavior, Energy, The Sexes, Economy and Dance. He ordered the famous (some say infamous) cover article, "Is God Dead?" He moved the magazine away from Republican partisanship. He personally wrote the TIME editorial calling for President Richard Nixon to resign.

After serving 11 years as TIME's managing editor, Grunwald took on the role of editor-in-chief of all of Time, Inc.'s magazines, including Fortune, Sports Illustrated, People and Money. In 1988 President Ronald Reagan appointed him U.S. Ambassador to his native Austria, a post he held until 1990.

In his final years Grunwald was gradually losing his eyesight due to macular degeneration, a fact he wrote about in Twilight: Losing Sight, Gaining Insight (1999). He also wrote a novel, A Saint, More or Less, which was published in 2003.

He was married twice. His first wife, Beverly Suser, died of breast cancer in 1981; they had three children in a marriage that lasted from 1953 until Mrs. Grunwald's death. In 1987, he married Manhattan socialite and former Vogue editor Louise Melhado.