Klaus Stimeder

Klaus Josef Stimeder (aka JM Stim)^[1], (* March 17, 1975 in Schaerding, Austria) is an author and a journalist who lives in New York City and Glassell Park. 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 "Despite Everything: The Oscar Bronner Story ", which covers the life of the Austro-Jewish publishing icon.

JM Stim (left) at a reading in Washington D.C. in October 2012 (with Tim Mohr)

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, Stimeder's 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 gathered in Martin's 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, Lucas Suppin and painter Kiki Kogelnik). After graduating from high school he went on studying History, Political Science and English Literature at the University of Vienna.

Career

Stimeder started a career in journalism in 1998 at the Foreign Desk of news magazine Format, which at the time was conceived as the Austrian equivalent of Newsweek. He instantly started specializing in war and disaster reporting, covering the war in Kosovo, the conflicts in Northern Ireland, Israel and the Palestinian territories and the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua.

In the summer of 2000, Stimeder quit Format and went to New York City to intern at German weekly New Yorker Staats-Zeitung. While in New York, Stimeder learned about the Code of Ethics^[2] of the New York Times and the work of The New Yorker's fact-checking-department, which left a lasting impression on him. Based on these experiences he later wrote the first-ever Code of Ethics for an Austrian periodical.^[3]

After Stimeder had returned to his native country he started working as a permanent contributor to the Metro section of Vienna alternative weekly Falter and the news-website DerStandard.at. For them, as well as for a variety of German, Austrian and Swiss news agencies, newspapers and magazines, he went on to do ground-reporting on the wars in Afghanistan^[4][5] and Iraq.

After having completed an internship at the Metro section of Berlin daily Tagesspiegel^[6] he returned to Format as a staff reporter in late 2002. An interview done by him and his colleague Stefan Kaltenbrunner with Salam Abdulmunem aka "Baghdad blogger" Salam Pax made international headlines.^[7]

After its owners decided to transform the news magazine into a business magazine and the division between editorial and commercial content was no longer adhered to, Stimeder left the magazine at the end of 2003 to join the Sports Desk of daily Der Standard, for which he covered domestic and international soccer.

While still working at Der Standard, Stimeder met London-based financial consultant Johannes Weyringer, together with whom he decided to found a new monthly whose editorial concept was based on publications like 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 publisher and editor Stimeder won over a number of renowned artists, politicians, actors and scientists as contributors to the magazine, i.e. Actionist painter Günter Brus, EU commissioner Johannes Hahn, actor Karl Markovics, philosopher Franz Schuh and quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger.

Under Stimeder's stewardship DATUM won numerous international and national awards for its design and for its content.^[8] It September 2005, it was named "International best news magazine" by Tyler Brûlé in his column "Fast lane" in the Financial Times in 2005.^[9] 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".^[10]

In October 2006 Stimeder was the first and to this day remains the only journalist who has ever done a face-to-face interview^[11] with Mahmoud Mohamed, who went on to become Austria's most notorious Jihadist.^[12]

In 2007 Stimeder co-initiated a series of literary events ("DATUM presents") which took place at Vienna's Rabenhof Theater and lasted until 2009. "DATUM presents" brought an array of acclaimed international writers to Austria's capital, i.e. Chuck Palahniuk, Ian Rankin, Sven Regener, Juli Zeh, FM Einheit of Einstürzende Neubauten, Manuel Andrack, Thomas Brussig or Robert Menasse. In 2007 Stimeder was a member of the jury of the Marlen Haushofer-Preis, a literary prize given out to young writers by the Austrian city of Steyr.

In August 2008 Stimeder was named "Head of the Best School for Young Writers in the Country" by Austrian journalism magazine "The Journalist".^[13]

In October 2008 Stimeder published the German edition of the biography "Despite Everything: The Oscar Bronner Story", a work he co-authored with fellow journalist Eva Weissenberger. "Despite" covers the life of Austro-Jewish publisher and artist Oscar Bronner. Bronner founded Austrian news magazine Profil, business magazine trend, the daily Der Standard and the news website derStandard.at. The book has received great critical acclaim in Austria, Germany, and the US, where it was presented at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York by Carl Bernstein and Frederic Morton in May 2009^[14]

In January 2009, after having turned down an offer to host a daily political talk show at cable television network ATV^[15] – apart from having acted as a political pundit on Austrian cable and network television on a regular basis, he had also had a number of appearances as a talking head on Austrian political matters on Al-Jazeera and the BBC's Television and Radio programmes – he left Vienna and moved to Berlin. Whilst giving up the editorship of DATUM, Stimeder stayed on as publisher.

Klaus Stimeder at a reading in Toronto on 14 April 2012

In July 2010 Stimeder resigned as publisher, sold his shares in DATUM and moved from Berlin to New York City, where he has been living and working as a freelance journalist and as a writer of non-fiction and fiction under the name JM Stim ever since.^[16] Since early 2015 Stimeder divides his time between his homes in The Bronx and Glassell Park.

Since 2000, Stimeder has served as a guest lecturer and has given speeches at numerous academic institutions across the US, Canada and Central Europe (i.e. Deutsches Haus at NYU,^[17] the German Department of Northwestern University, DePaul University, University of Minnesota,^[18] Ottawa University,^[19] Austrian Cultural Forum New York, the Department of Journalism and Media Management at Vienna's College of Higher Education, the Department for Communication at Vienna University, the annual conference of the German Studies Association/GSA, American Association of Teachers of German-Connecticut).^[20]

In March 2011 Stim published "Here is Berlin",^[21] a book-length essay on the German capital. "Here is Berlin" has received positive reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, following a tour^[22] of the US,^[23] Canada, Germany, Austria and Spain.^[24][25][26] (together with Tim Mohr who wrote the introduction to "Here is Berlin"). The book has so far been translated into four languages (German, French, Portuguese, Spanish).^[27]

In May 2013 Stim published the English translation of his Oscar Bronner biography.^[28] It was presented at a panel discussion hosted by the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York on May 15. Panel participants included Stim, Oscar Bronner, writer Frederic Morton, editor David S. Benjamin and Harper's Magazine President John R. MacArthur.^[29]

Stim's most recent publication is titled "Stories 1995-2015".^[30][31][32] "Stories" is a selection of his journalistic works from two decades. The introduction to the book was written by prominent German journalist Michael Frank. The book's cover was drawn by acclaimed comic artist Nicolas Mahler. The American author Eric Jarosinski (aka internet phenomenon Nein Quarterly) named "Stories" his "Book of the Year 2015.^[33]

Publications

• Stories 1995-2015, redelsteiner dahimene edition, Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-3-9503359-8-9
• Despite Everything: The Oscar Bronner Story,^[34] ASIN: B00CS2IO6A, ebook. German Version: 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

References

External links

• Official website (in German)