Klaus Stimeder

Klaus Josef Stimeder (aka J.M. Stim), (* March 17, 1975 in Schaerding, Austria) is an author and a journalist who lives in New York City. In Germany and Austria the former war correspondent became known as the founder and publisher of monthly political magazine Datum and for coauthoring the biography „Trotzdem. Die Oscar Bronner Story “, which covers the life of the Austro-Jewish publishing icon.

Personal

Stimeder grew up in the Upper Austrian village of Obernberg am Inn as the only son of a lower-middle-class family (his father worked as a customs officer on the German-Austrian border, his mother as a shop assistant).

During his childhood and teenage years, Stimeders biggest influence was his late maternal uncle Franz Martin who had been living and studying in Salzburg. In the seventies and eighties many contemporary Austrian artists and writers forgathered in Martins various apartments, whose works and lifestyles had a big impact on Stim (i.e. H. C. Artmann, for whose readings Martin had been delivering the musical support for many years, Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke and painter Kiki Kogelnik). After graduating from high school he went on studying history, political science and English literature at Vienna University.

Career

In 1998 Stimeder started a career as a journalist at the foreign desk of news magazine Format, which back then was conceived as the Austrian equivalent of Newsweek. During his spell there he specialized in war and disaster reporting, covering the war in Kosovo, the conflict in Northern Ireland and the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua. He also did ground-reporting on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the conflicts in Israel and the Palestinian territories and Sierra Leone for German-language magazines, newspapers and news agencies.

At the beginning of 2000 Stimeder quit his job and went to New York to work at German weekly New Yorker Staats-Zeitung and later on as a free lance journalist.

During his first stint in New York Stimeder learned about the Code of Ethics^[1] of the New York Times and the work of her fact-checking-departments, which made a lasting impression on him. On the basis of these experiences he later wrote the first-ever Code of Ethics for a publication in Austria.^[2]

After Stimeder had returned to his native country in late 2000 he started out as a permanent contributor to the metro department at city weekly Falter and the news-website DerStandard.at, for which he did ground reporting.

After having completed an internship at the metro section of Berlin daily Tagesspiegel in the summer of 2002 he returned to the weekly Austrian news magazine Format as a staff reporter. During his second spell at the magazine an interview done by him and his colleague Stefan Kaltenbrunner with Salam Abdulmunem aka „Baghdad blogger“ Salam Pax made international headlines.^[3]

After the owner had decided to transform the news magazine into an business magazine and the division between editorial and commercial content was no longer adhered to, Stimeder left Format to become a staffer at the sports desk of daily Der Standard, where he specialized in covering domestic and international soccer.

At the end of 2003, while still working at Der Standard, Stimeder got acquainted with London-based financial consultant Johannes Weyringer, together with whom he decided to found a new monthly that was based on the editorial concepts of The New Yorker and the German weeklys Die Zeit and Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin. The first issue of DATUM – Seiten der Zeit was presented to a selected audience in downtown Vienna in May 2004.

As acting publisher and editor Stimeder was able to win over internationally renowned artists, authors, politicians and scientists as contributors to the magazine, i.e. artist and painter Günter Brus, EU commissioner Johannes Hahn, actor Karl Markovics, philosopher Franz Schuh and quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger.

Since its founding, DATUM under Stimeder's publisher- and editorship won numerous international and national awards for its design as well as for its content. It was hailed as “International best news magazine“ by Monocle and Wallpaper-founder Tyler Brûlé in his “Fast lane“-column in the Financial Times in 2005. In 2009 DATUM was named one of the “100 most innovative magazines in the world“ by members of a jury of Luxembourg-based magazine symposium “Colophon“.

In October 2008 Stimeder published the biography “Trotzdem. Die Oscar Bronner Story“ (Ueberreuter), a work he coauthored with award-winning journalist Eva Weissenberger. “Trotzdem“ covers the life of legendary Austro-Jewish publisher and artist (Bronner founded Austrian news magazine Profil, economy magazine trend, daily Der Standard and the news website derStandard.at. The book has been received with great critical acclaim in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and the US, where it was presented in May 2009 at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York by American journalism legend Carl Bernstein and bestselling writer Frederic Morton.^[4]

For his work with young journalists and aspiring writers at DATUM Stimeder was named “head of the best school for young writers in the country“ by Austrian journalism magazine “The journalist“ in 2008.^[5]

As publisher of DATUM by cooperating with Viennas' Rabenhof Theater from 2007 to 2009 Stimeder co-initiated a series of literary events (“DATUM presents“) during which’s course writers like Chuck Palahniuk, Ian Rankin, Sven Regener, Juli Zeh, FM Einheit of Einstürzende Neubauten, Thomas Brussig or Robert Menasse took to the stage to do public readings. In 2007 Stimeder was a member of the jury of the Marlen Haushofer-Preis, a prize which is given out to young writers by the Austrian city of Steyr.

In the summer of 2010 Stimeder sold his shares in DATUM to his partner and moved to New York City, where he now lives and works as a freelance journalist and as a writer of fiction and non-fiction under the name JM Stim.^[6]

Since 2000, Stim has served as a guest lecturer and has given speeches at various universities, colleges and schools across the US, Canada and Central Europe (i.e. German Department of Northwestern University, DePaul University Chicago, Fairfield University, University of Minnesota, Ottawa University, at the annual conference of the German Studies Association/GSA, Department for Journalism and Media Management at Vienna College of Higher Education, Institute for Communication Sciences at Vienna University).

His recent work “Here is Berlin”, a book-length essay on the German capital, was published in December 2011. The book has received positive reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, following a tour of the US, Canada and Europe (together with Tim Mohr who wrote the introduction to “Here is Berlin”).^[7]^[8]^[9]^[10] The book has so far been translated into four languages (German, French, Portuguese, Spanish).^[11]

Stim's most recent publication is the English translation of his Oscar Bronner biography. Titled "Despite Everything: The Oscar Bronner Story."^[12] The translation was presented at a panel discussion on May 15, 2013 hosted by the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York. Panel participants included Stim, Oscar Bronner, writer Frederic Morton,^[13] editor David S. Benjamin, Harper's Magazine President John R. MacArthur,^[14] and moderator Martin Rauchbauer.^[15]

Publications

Trotzdem. Die Oscar-Bronner-Story (mit Eva Weissenberger), Ueberreuter, Vienna, 2008, ISBN 3-8000-3888-9
The Original Kings Of Comedy, in: Andreas Ungerböck und Gunnar Landsgesell (Hg.): Spike Lee. Bertz + Fischer, Vienna, 2006, ISBN 3-929470-87-X
Pushing an elephant up the stairs, in: Christl, Reinhard: Wie werde ich Journalist/in? Wege in den Traumberuf, LIT, Vienna, 2007, ISBN 3-8258-0466-6
Here is Berlin, Rokko’s Adventures, New York-Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-200-02476-2

External links

References

Authority control	WorldCat VIAF: 88486564 LCCN: no2009071099 GND: 140246258